My favourite vowel: Oh NAUR explained!

[@MIRobin22]

I have to say, "This is what the new Australian goat is gliding towards" is an incredible sentence, with or without context

[@robertbollard5475]

The Shane Warne of phonetics.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

[@kobeischildren]

Nice catch dude 😂

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Set it to music, anyone?

[@jhonbus]

Part of my brain is convinced it's a cryptic crossword clue...

[@Pingwn]

I love that this channel is the definition of descriptivism, you always analyse how people are actually talking and you never make a judgement on the different pronunciations but just describe it objectively.

[@john.premose]

But he is wrong about the linking "w" and "y" or whatever it is it's called. Fancy having the arrogance to say everybody and every textbook and expert is wrong, lol. There is most assuredly a w sound in 'going'.

[@tracyh5751]

@@john.premose He didn't say there wasn't a w sound. He said the sound isn't a linking sound, but instead comes from a vowel glide. If it came from a linking sound you would hear it in contexts without vowel glides, which you don't.

[@razzle_dazzle]

He did say it was his favourite vowel. Not exactly prescriptive, but a judgement nonetheless. 😂

[@john.premose]

@@tracyh5751 yes you do hear it in contexts without a vowel glide. You must have no ear for sounds whatsoever. Even the word "go" by itself has a w sound at the end. It certainly does the way I say it, and probably you too unless you are Scottish or something similar.

[@john.premose]

@taliyahofthenasaaj7570 what do you mean "if", it does. This is so pedantic.

[@jugbrewer]

if i told my partner "i love the the australian r-coloured goat vowel," they would probably think i was having some kind of fever-induced episode

[@randomdude4669]

I'm a young Aussies and despise it, its so godamn dumb sounding and its not that hard to say it the old way instead of this dumb trendy new way.

[@romanr.301]

@@randomdude4669There is nothing inherently dumb about it. Linguistics is descriptive, non prescriptive. Language evolves, and phonologies change. There is no inherent value to it being pronounced one way or another; that’s purely subjective and based on social conventions, not linguistic ones.

[@ayszhang]

​@@romanr.301He wasnt talking about linguistics . Just saying he doesnt like the sound

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

​@@romanr.301Enforcing norms is not incompatible with the use of descriptive linguistics.

[@sweetestaphrodite]

but there's hardly an r. The young aren't doing that, only a VERY SPECIFIC accent is, most are just spelling it like that as a joke...

[@zedlewis_hobbies]

I'm gonna be honest, as an Australian I've been so confused what the hell all of these Americans were getting at identifying some phantom R. I pronounce my goat glide in the same way as you described initially, and have never heard an 'r' out in the wild for the same sound. But then you showed me that those very clear rhotasised sounds from the start of the video were the same o's I'd heard and gone "see, no r's!" initially. Insane. You made me hear it! And I hate you for it :)

[@Neopopulas]

Americans hear the 'naur' a LOT more easily than Australians, as an australian i've never heard it in the real world, but i see american's mimicking australians and they all do it. So its obviously something they are hearing.

[@shadowmaster1313]

To me it's us doing 'ah' for an 'r' sound which is a distinction without a difference for americans who are primed to hear 'r' much more than we are

[@Siberius-]

I'm Australian and I just don't have a "stereotypically" Australian accent per se, and I don't meet many Australians who do, though I don't meet a lot of people. This video was very helpful in regards to that particular version of the Australian accent, because yea I can understand it in THAT specific case. Though even with more stereotypical accents, sometimes even then there's no (what comes across as an) R-sound.

[@peepeetrain8755]

i always thought it was a no---ahhh like what little kids do and Americans with their rhotic accent thinks it's an r but since we don't have a rhotic accent we hear it differently.

[@J1mmyMack]

How could you not hear it?? 😅

[@thedofflin]

As an Australian, this sounds specifically like a Northern Beaches accent, and more specifically women from there. I'd say it plays a similar role to the 'valley girl' accent.

[@boop7313]

accurate. lol

[@Penguin21able]

I hear almost no one on the Northern Beaches talk like this

[@PencilProper]

Yeah it's true, there is that valley girl vocal fry in alot of young women now days.

[@sloth_e]

Agreed!

[@SerenityChaos1975]

Glad someone can explain it because I have only heard a handful of ppl on social media say it like that but foreigners make out that we all speak this way!

[@user-yr1uq1qe6y]

The intrusive R hits my ears like a ton of bricks, but the thing that really gets me is the sneaky Canadian “about”. Everything is going along smoothly then BAM! A boot comes from nowhere and gets me. I listen to the BBC for world news fairly often and wonder how we’re going to accomplish anything with a milla tree when a military is much more effective. Finally, I’m in awe with how phones in the UK run on bad trees.

[@ViaticalTree]

Canadians don’t say “a boot” for about. They say “a boat”.

[@MizaBrega]

As a young Australian, I've been confused about where all the aur naur had been coming from, so this is somewhat enlightening. I'd never heard it in my own accent, the rhoticised goat, or most people around me - in my immediate family or community - but got a sense of it in some voices of people from other parts of Australia including extended family that live in another state, leading me to believe it's probably regional. In listening a little more to my own voice now though, I think I do approach it more than I expected, but not to the same degree as most examples in the video.

[@AurinneA]

Yeah I'd be interested in seeing it tracked by location. My feeling is that it's more common towards the east coast, and perhaps more in the capitals or certain cities, but I would like to know how true that really is. 🤔

[@wavingcat5]

It’s definitely regional, which is what’s kind of annoying about these generalisations.

[@jimmux_v0]

@@AurinneA I'm trying to recall where I've heard it, and I'm starting to think it's a reaction to the old Aussie nasal twang. If I say a few words with the twang, then without, I can feel my accent move into that r coloured territory. It seems possible that places where some people distance themselves from that sound (which to be honest has some bogan associations) will feature the shift more.

[@jeffh8803]

Definitely regional and a bit generational. Kath and Kim have a really exaggerated version of it but you won’t hear that anywhere in regional nsw or most of qld

[@notaspeck6104]

Same I honestly only know one person who actually does the 'naur' lol.

[@Aboogidyboogidy]

This is amazing. I'm Australian and was completely hoodwinked into thinking it was a US southerner, but once you told me that the written words were a lie I could understand each of them as the Aussie pronunciation

[@whophd]

Me too but I thought “cars” was obviously Irish

[@SuperNuclearUnicorn]

Crazy gave it away to me

[@EH23831]

Same… but of course he cheated by giving us the wrong words 😂

[@shamelesshussy]

As a Southerner, nurrrrr.

[@chrisamies2141]

@@whophd same.

[@ElectricAlan]

That was the best pronunciation of the word "Aussie" I've ever heard from a non-Australian I almost cried a little

[@SilverFlame819]

It's always been fascinating to me that Australians don't pronounce the Au on their own country name. They say Uhstraylya. Which makes sense that so many Aussies seem to prefer "Strayans", because "Ussies" sounds dirty. 😂

[@cursedGalataea]

It's Ozzy yeah? Ozstraylya. The Land of Oz, that's why it's 'down under'... right ? Have I been wrong my entire life?!

[@DarrellWilkerson4.6]

​@@SilverFlame819no our As sound like Os and your Os sound like As, record yourself saying "dog" or "god" and to us it sounds like you guys can't say an O, it's comes out as "owh my gawd my dawg won't stahp" with no true O sound while we will say "wot" and "wotta" with no true A sound.

[@ChikoWhat]

Right? Can never understand it xD Oarzzie, from Oarstrayleigha. I've heard them speak of such "tragedeighs" a million times.

[@LorraineVirginie]

The fact he can so smoothly pronounce all those words in the English, Australian, and American accents, and not even in a sentence, is absolutely incredible to me.

[@ashuggtube]

I think this is my first Dr Geoff video and I agree. I’d be curious to find out if he is naturally a good mimic or this ability has come from the years and years of study.

[@urwholefamilydied]

Because he's academically memorized how certain vowels and consonants are pronounced in different accents... that's what he studies. If you were to send him to America or England and ask him to do a perfect accent, I think that's a different skill set. And vice versa, some people who are really good at doing different accents, wouldn't necessarily know academically what they're doing.

[@Tazznbk]

He did say though that he's not trying to pronounce words, more just pronounce the right sounds according to the charts etc.. So I'd say alot of it is just practicing in reality what he's learning in the theory.

[@cactustactics]

Yeah I feel like this is precisely because he's thinking in terms of sounds and articulations - because he's talking about the mechanics of how these sounds are made, he knows exactly what he needs to do to pronounce it in a certain accent. Following the recipe basically It would be interesting to know how good he is at actually adopting an accent though! Like if he's able to consistently adjust his way of speaking in general - I feel like that's a different skill (but obviously helped by knowing what you actually need to do)

[@lilsprugga]

practise makes perfect!

[@biosparkles9442]

I'm Australian and I didn't really understand the naur meme until this video. Until you broke it down I really couldn't hear the r sound slipping in at the end of our goat vowels, but you made it so clear

[@Mountainshark]

Australian English is ugly. Nour for no is annoying to hear.

[@esperago]

I have been trying to understand how and why Brits and Aussies learn such wackadoodle pronunciations for nearly two decades. Their reactions are so rude, indignant and stubborn. What I want to know is how the mispronunciation keeps carrying in from generation to generation. Yes, I get that we all tend to speak the way our parents speak, so that has a large impact on our pronunciation. However, when Brits and Aussies are in grade school and the teacher is conducting a spelling lesson, how are the mispronunciations not corrected, each and every time? For instance, the teacher says "Okay class, spell banan-er" and the class says "B-A-N-A-N-A spells banan-er" what the heck happens? Or when they teacher says "Kids, what does N-O spell?" and the kids all day "Naur!!", what the heck happens? How isn't the screw-up instantly spotted and corrected, for all time? Yes, I have a regional fiction myself, just like everyone and didn't spot it during grade school English lessons. However, all my mispronunciations are minor tweaks to existing sounds. The Brits and Aussies are adding brand new vowels and consonants to simple, straightforward words... and then are blind and full of indignant anger about it. I just don't understand it.

[@biosparkles9442]

@@esperago You should probably watch some more of the videos on this channel if you want to understand why different accents exist.

[@OdaKa]

​@@esperago Please tell us more about how pretentious and arrogant you are

[@OdaKa]

​@@esperago They're indignant and angry because're trying to come up to normal people speaking the way normal people speak, and telling them the way they speak their own language and dialect and accent is wrong and bad. They're indignant and angry because you've got a hypocritical attitude and a superiority complex and self-respecting person is going to put up with that. "How are you so bad at pronouncing words when your teachers taught you that this letter makes this sound and that letter makes that sound. How could you be so ignorant about how you're SUPPOSED to speak based on what a school teacher told you the rules are?" Imagine how indignant and angry you would be if somebody came up to you and told you "Written language is a way to communicate words between people who know how to read, but it has necessary limitations. The pronunciations of words vary from region to region and person to person and evolve over time. None of them are wrong, they're just different. School education is limited in how much it can teach you, and people who innately understand literacy and pronunciation don't struggle with the concept that strict spelling rules don't dictate pronunciation. Furthermore, schoolteachers are not the ultimate authority on how words are 'supposed' to be pronounced. The people who speak the words are. As long as the words are understandable to the person being spoken to, no correction is necessarily. Believe it or not, you yourself pronounce have words incorrectly based on the history of spoken word, and even based on the rules that you learned in school. You shouldn't go around seriously and sincerely trying to tell people how they're supposed to speak for many reasons, but one reason is that you yourself do not speak perfectly. If you're joking around, that's different. Your approach to interacting with people who speak different to you is all wrong, and I don't know how you went through school where you should have learned social skills and come out of it with such a whackadoodle concept of what's annoying and inappropriate and what's respectful and understanding" I bet if somebody came up to you and said that, you'd be upset and indignant.

[@elmondo-s1e]

Makes me (a Scot) so incredibly happy to see you using an English flag for the English pronunciation instead of lumping us all under the union flag. Not that you would be so silly, of course. I honestly think all your Scottish accents are more Scottish than mine ahahah

[@ellevasc]

i noticed that as well!! i’ve seen ppl say using the union jack is the same as using the us flag (since there’s many different us american accents as well, i mean) but its rly not. ppl forget the uk isn’t a nation… but yh it’s really great to see. hopefully in the future people will start using the scottish and welsh flags to refer to those accents/ not use the union flag to talk abt english accents xx edit: sentence structure for more clarity

[@MP-hz6iz]

​@@ellevascit's not just different accents of English that are found in Scotland and Wales, but whole other languages (Scots Gaelic, Scots and Welsh).

[@ellevasc]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@MP-hz6iz well i know, it’s just that i was talking about english. of course there are plenty of other reasons why not to put everyone in the uk under the same flag. of course the welsh flag should be used when talking about welsh, but why not when talking about welsh english? i just think it’s important to question why an english accent gets called british but a scottish one is just scottish, yk. england’s english shouldn’t be the default, that’s all i’m saying.

[@JaneXemylixa]

ScotTISH Gaelic @@MP-hz6iz

[@InqvisitorMagnvs]

@@ellevasc Perhaps because “England“ and “Britain“ have been used as synonyms since at least mediæval times, even in the Middle English of Chaucer (long before union of the crowns). Needless to say _Britain_ / _Britannia_ is a much more ancient name-even in antiquity there was conflation of terms as «Βρεττανία» (Brettanía), ancient Greek geographic term for the island, in Latin came to also have a political meaning to refer to the Roman province of _Britannia_ - which encompassed only parts of the island that later became England & Wales. So there has always existed dual meaning. Also, just for practical purposes: “Scottish English“ and “Welsh English“ sound fine, but speaking of “English English“ can sound silly and cause confusion. Lastly, there are are also countless different English accents within England itself, so if someone wanted to be petty they could complain why not use a symbol of the exact region/accent rather than lump together all of England's accents as one. __________________ c. 1387, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Ffrankeleẏns Tale”, _The Canterbury Tales_ : _A yeer and moore laſted this bliſful lyf,_ (A year and more lasted this blissful life,) _Til that the knyght of which I ſpeke of thus,_ (Until the knight of whom I thus speak,) _That of Kayrrud was cleped Arveragus,_ (That was called Arveragus of Kayrrud,) _Shoop hym to goon and dwelle a yeer or twayne_ (Prepared himself to go and dwell a year or two) *_In Engelond, that cleped was ek Britayne_** (In England, which was also called Britain)* 1461, John Wrexworth, Guyan King-of-Arms, _Grant of Arms to William Swayne of Somerset_ (Add. MS. 14295, fo. 5b): _«The wch blason I the foresayd Gwyon Kinge of Armes witnesse: not then borne of any other person whatsoever he bee wthin _*_the Realme of England (otherwyse called the Ile of Great Brittaigne)_*_ »_

[@Zelmel]

It's amazing how much context can inform everything in speech.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Absolutely!

[@nahblue]

It's so confusing but I'm always impressed by how our brains make sense of it, the language, in context. We're so good.

[@Deschutron]

It might also partly explain how the Australian accent has survived the last 70 years of American mass media. When there are sounds you can make that are different words in the different accents, you can't freely mix them.

[@lexacutable]

I am an Aussie who majored in linguistics (16+ years ago) and this still exploded my head

[@stonent]

Did you say "naur" before it exploded?

[@esperago]

NPC alert!

[@Sourcoolness]

The interesting thing is that this sound has actually existed in eastern Australian accents for a long time, it was just much more subtle, which is why Pru and Trude have been speaking that way since the mid nineties - they're an exaggeration of a real accent that existed at the time. Now, that version of the accent is much more posh, but the goat vowel is there.

[@humanrich]

A plunger in your Bodum's always nice. And it comes with these matching cups which are cyuuuushe.

[@Skeleton_Black]

what's more interesting is that when you look into the history of australian accents. it didn't sound like this in the 60s and 70s. the accents back then sounded more british and posh and somehow it started changing. possibly in the 80s??

[@Sourcoolness]

@@Skeleton_Black They also sounded more similar to the kiwi accent.

[@Magooch86]

@@Skeleton_Black TV/radio presenters in the past deliberately affected a posh English style accent, but if you watch vox pops on the ABC from the 60's of working class people you can see their accent was still different to today's accents, but definitely not posh.

[@reneaalenaje410]

@@Magooch86 tots agree, the older accents were more 'striney'

[@Rose_Nebula]

This is one of the best phonetics videos I’ve ever seen. Your point about how practical speech isn’t about trying to reach certain articulations but rather to make certain sounds was completely new to me and makes so much sense.

[@cb-au]

The “nauurr” clip 10:23 gave me Kath and Kim flashbacks! Such an amazing show along with their dramatisation of the Australia accent. “I want to be effluent, mum” and “Brett, I'm gonna make you your favourite meal tonight - rack off lamb”. So accurate and still has me in stitches. Goes to show how important context is when you hear a word and how it changes what you hear.

[@Landry16]

Thank you so much for saving me time

[@lobstermash]

Yes! I came looking for this. I thought it was mostly Prue and Trude that did it.

[@danielmeixner7125]

I was hoping there would be a clip of prue and true! I hope Geoff has seen the show!

[@Nalehw]

As a New Zealander I never understood where the 'naur' meme was coming from, and even at the start of this video I struggled to hear it, but your slow-mos after the Big Reveal at 8:30 really helped.

[@tristanridley1601]

Isn't it in New Zealand English too?

[@Nalehw]

@@tristanridley1601 Yes, which is why I can't hear it easily - to me it's just what the vowels normally sound like!

[@BrianMcGuirkBMG]

​@@tristanridley1601 Naur! Oh! Maybe it is...?

[@thepiper5522]

Helloyr

[@randomdude4669]

​@@tristanridley1601yeh theirs clip on KZbin of kiwi girls getting mocked because they were yelling NO

[@ethanyalejaffe5234]

The "nurse" clued me in initially that something was weird. As a speaker of North American English, the first few words sounded very north American to me, but the nurse almost sounded like "narse," which did remind me of Australian.

[@SpacedMancy]

I thought maybe midwest for a second when I heard that one lol

[@msmendes214]

​@@SpacedMancyyap, I was also thinking... Fargo accent there, a touch?

[@overcomingobstaclescreates1695]

As someone who has lived in the US west all my life, "blur" (sounded like blar) and "nurse" (sounded like narse) clued me in the speaker was NOT, in fact, American.

[@elkins4406]

Yes, 'nurse' was the giveaway for me as well. Many of the other words did sound North American to me, but 'nurse' ("narse") and 'blur' ("blar") just weren't quite right to my ear.

[@accuratejaney8140]

That "blur" almost sounded like "bloat" to me, so it had me thinking it's probably not an American

[@das_it_mane]

This guy is passionate about stuff I didn't even know existed

[@cope847]

He's passionate about stuff i didn't realize was so fascinating.

[@bowietwombly5951]

I correctly identified that the speaker at that being was Australian, but you thoroughly blew my mind with that reveal. 🤯 I am quite humbled now. Thanks again for such fascinating observations about the sounds we make!

[@narnigrin]

I completely incorrectly - and according to plan - identified her as from "somewhere in the US", but felt suspiciously uncertain about it, as I was completely lost on placing her any more specifically. Loved the switcheroo!

[@atriyakoller136]

I was switching between British with some form of rhotic accent and American a lot until I looked at the comments. Funnily, though, I didn't hear the word "cars". I felt like it was "cursed" with the /t/ sound at the end cut off

[@zoyadulzura7490]

I was so confused by this comment until I got past 8:12 in the video.

[@TobiasBalk]

I saw it coming, maybe because English is not my first language?

[@Chadner]

That was such a good twist thourgh

[@Hooray4Kierkegaard]

Dr Geoff, as an Aussie who's curious about linguistics, I can't thank you enough! I've been wondering about all this ever since those H20 clips went viral. Thank you so so much for this proper in-depth linguistic analysis - finally my itch is scratched. One particularly interesting part not discussed in your video is how many Aussies - myself included - couldn't hear the rhotic r sound in our "oh no" sounds at all! It wasn't until I spent an hour trying to make the rhotic r myself, and repeating "no" to myself dozens of times, that I could start to understand. You see, because most Aussies under emphasise our usual (non-rhotic) r sound, and because we don't normally use rhotic r, we don't interpret the rhotic r as an r. And often, if r is after a vowel, we barely say it (like in the name Carl - we say CAHL). So it's common to find aussies online protesting that we don't say NAUR because there's no R at the end! How deaf we are to our own rhoticity! 😂 A clincher, though: the clip of Mia Goth screaming "I'm a star!" in the film Pearl sounds immensely similar to an Australian accent yelling "Emma Stone!" This is a reverse example to the ones you've provided here of an Aussie O sounding like an American r. Thanks again!

[@nataliecarrington2550]

This is really fascinating to me as an Aussie teacher of English as an additional language, trying to explain why some of our vowels are different to the kinds of vowels my students have heard in American English (which is the kind of English they've mostly been exposed to). Also, "rhoticised goat" really appeals to my love of assonance haha

[@nerdycus6935]

That '...pushing the vowel's glide trajectory further down under.' is worth hitting subscribe.

[@DodderingOldMan]

As an Australian, I'm once again thrown into a sort of existential crisis by this video. Do I say things like this? How do I decide how to say the things I say? I never have to think about it, I just... speak, and the words come out, sounding like they do... I actually went and listened to some recordings of myself to try to figure out what's going on in my subconscious when I speak. That pronunciation, 'naur', is interesting to me, as I would definitely never use that pronunciation myself, but I absolutely recognise it. I don't think it's just an age thing, as I'd say there are plenty of older folk who speak like that. I think it's got just as much to do with cultural, educational and geographic factors.

[@book-obsessedweirdo8677]

You listened to recordings of your self? Wow, brave.

[@wandby7090]

it is like that cause you shape your mouth in a certain way as well as where your tongue position is while speaking. (same happens when we learn new abcs and you see letters and sounds not natural to your language - you either mimic or learn the position of the tongue and mouth)

[@Pilk_]

I just commented elsewhere, but Prue and Trude's speech is saturated with this [ʌɹ̈]. Not youthful at all!

[@evilfuzzydoom]

It's from people trying to enunciate properly on social media, more than anything else.

[@DodderingOldMan]

@@book-obsessedweirdo8677 Ha! Well, it definitely did take some time to build up the courage, and even now I don't feel entirely comfortable doing it... I absolutely hate my voice, for ages I wanted to start a KZbin channel but didn't want to put my voice out there for the world to hear. Eventually I mustered the courage, and now, a few years later, I can listen to my voice without cringing myself inside out.

[@laurat1264]

Longtime fan of MuchelleB’s channel, and she’s the first person I thought of when I read the title of this video in my recommended, only to see her pop up in the video itself. 🤣

[@Kyropinesis]

australians when something crazy happens: 🇳🇴

[@RichardCox0]

Perfect

[@artemetra3262]

lmao

[@txviking]

Being from Norway, I find this extra funny.

[@notwithouttext]

more like when something COSY/COZY happens

[@viktorisacsson7758]

I keep seeing this everywhere I go. NO MORE "NORWAY"😂. No but for real tho

[@kkanden]

omg the way my jaw dropped with the grand quiz revelation!! yet another wonderful video, i love these so much!!!!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Glad you liked it!!

[@OrdnanceTV]

I was shocked. ​@@DrGeoffLindsey

[@nullusanxietas2379]

A note: this accent is largely regional. I'm from Queensland and we don't generally use this diphthong in our version of the middle-aussie accent. The New South Welshman accent is parodied and exemplified quite heavily in "Kath and Kim" especially by the snobby shop assistants Prue and Trude. (Or should it be Pruue and Truuuude?)

[@AJWRAJWR]

I think it's more of a class-based posh 'valley girl' sort of thing. We definitely have plenty of girls that speak like that here on the Gold Coast. Also, Kath and Kim are Victorian anyway. Accents in Australia aren't really regional anyway. It's more about where you stand on the roughneck-posh spectrum.

[@thespamdance311]

Kath and Kim is Victorian.

[@download351]

@@AJWRAJWR Incorrect. I can promise you after years of working in national call centres in my younger days I could absolutely recognise region based on accent. I could tell someone was from very quickly into a conversation and that was only after being given their name and account number. It wasn't what they said, it was HOW they said it. Different rounded Os from NSW, twangy Ns from QLD, drawled aaaaaaaaah's for Darwin.They'd be horrified to hear it, but cashed up bogans often would have exactly the same accent as the old money callers. You could really only tell social standing based on the language that they used. But accent? Always regional.

[@AJWRAJWR]

@download351 Yeah, I think what makes it tricky is that there's no actual names for the various accents. Everything just gets called an 'Aussie accent'. So when you do meet another Aussie with a different way of speaking, it doesn't get noticed as much, and you think to yourself, 'Hey, here's just another fellow Aussie.' I think foreigners can often pick up on the variations more than we can notice ourselves.

[@mj.l]

i used to be baffled by the attempts americans make at mimicking australian accents, until i went to sydney and realised the new south welsh accent is probably what they're trying to copy. even NSW premiers say "new south waahles", it's definitely more regional than class based - plenty of wealthy, white collar australian businessmen speak with rough ocker accents.

[@toolittletoolate3917]

I still recall the day that I first heard an Ozzie say “Oh, no”. I strove for days to reproduce her pronunciation (in the privacy of my own home) and eventually got pretty close, but my American mouth just didn’t want to twist itself into a knot.

[@Hooray4Kierkegaard]

I'm the same, but in reverse - i try and try to do a rhotic r but i can never get it right!

[@Tuna-mayo-sushi]

I saw if u say R N R In an American accent it sounds like oh no in Aussie accent lol

[@KindredBrujah]

@@Tuna-mayo-sushiI suspect that would very much depend on which American accent it was. I suspect it wouldn't work in a South Carolina accent and probably not a Boston accent either.

[@suzbone]

​@@Tuna-mayo-sushiomg that's genius 👏 👏 😂

[@tropezando]

​@@Tuna-mayo-sushiyou've hacked the mainframe lol

[@adsim92]

As an Australian, I find this incredibly interesting. I'm obviously aware that accents exist, but having a well-communicated academic breakdown about how mine/Australian's accents work is truly fascinating. I've been saying words out loud with the video and catching myself thinking "oh shit, we do say it like that."

[@maestro7534]

As an Australian, this is quite enlightening. I've received many comments about how my "no" sounds like "nur". That TikTok summed it up quite well!

[@evilfuzzydoom]

It's just lots of young Americans suddenly discovering that accents exist.

[@innertuber4049]

Ouer nouer

[@civil_leuthie]

@@evilfuzzydoom America has 27 different accents/dialects, second to Britain's 29. Ireland has more English dialects than Australia. But go off.

[@julianmorrisco]

@@civil_leuthie I believe the poster meant accents other than those from the US. I’m not having a go, but your answer kinda proves the point. :D.

[@JabbyMayoCD]

@@evilfuzzydoom No, it's because it's a uniquely Australian (maybe NZ as well) phenomenon.

[@vmstranger]

I watched a 7+ hour stream/vid with a young Australian over past few days and it fired my memories to all of my speech studies from college, trying to uncover and explain the schwau sound... thank you for having this perfect exploration out for all of us to enjoy and learn

[@scaredyfish]

Definitely keen for more Australian content. Also, New Zealand would be fun.

[@00beasis]

Yis!

[@rabidL3M0NS]

Nu Zild

[@mrpandabites]

I'd love a video on the similarity of New Zealander and South African.

[@hotdog1214]

@@mrpandabites Same. Also a video on why the accents of Britain, Aus and NZ are so different. Its always a brain workout watching Dr Lindsey, but fascinating none the less.

[@RatelHBadger]

No, New Zealand is not fun... Trust me. I hate our lazy accent. It makes it worse when some people blend it with "cuzzy bro" that blends anglicised Maori.

[@lothariobazaroff3333]

Great video! I was a fan of that Australian TV series "H2O: Just Add Water" and I even bought the complete edition on 12 DVDs. I'm from Poland and I was really astonished how they pronounced "no", "so", "know" etc. Now you gave me the explanation I've been looking for since 2008-2010.

[@Ola-cb1xt]

Watching it the first time without polish dub is weird. Like, why do so many people say Cleo sort of like Cleor? 😂

[@randomdude4669]

Young Aussies front the O like crazy unlike old Aussies who speak from the back of their throat

[@randomdude4669]

​@@Ola-cb1xtjust the modern shift of it comming forwards in the mouth, which my theory is because its slowly imitating the american Owe which is also fronted but has a W sound, because if you get a young Aussie to add the W sound it sounds identical to the general american NOwe and not the fronted NOur

[@xopi2521]

I have a terrible unrelated New Zealand English joke. Q: “What’s a Hindu?” A: “Lays iggs.” Sorry.

[@xTheITx]

"What does a hen do?" - took me a while to get it even though I'm a Kiwi! Thanks for sharing 😆

[@jackochainsaw]

Kiwis definitely put the "I" in Yes. I always know it's a Kiwi when I hear them say "yis". Australians don't really do that.

[@jaycee330]

@@jackochainsaw Fush and chups.

[@jakmanxyom]

I remember John Oliver throwing around "Iminim" when his show covered Eminem's plagiarism lawsuit vs the then-PM's political party over the song used in its campaign ads...

[@ezb6798]

This is a fantastic KZbin convergence. An Australian craftsperson whose KZbin videos I watch regularly uses this form of the Goat vowel to an extreme degree. I have long been confused as to why it sounds like she is saying RRR all the time. Now here’s one of my other favorite channels explaining it!

[@digitalbrentable]

Clickspring?

[@ants7219]

@@digitalbrentable ididathing

[@jcortese3300]

I love that channel too -- if I'm guessing correctly as to which one you're talking about. 🙂 Her cheery "Hellrrrrr!" always caught my ear, and this describes it perfectly.

[@ezb6798]

@@jcortese3300 I was referring to Kelly Casanova’s weaving vidoes. (Her on-line courses are fantastic, too.)

[@jcortese3300]

@@ezb6798 I've seen her videos and they're great. I was thinking of Shelby Sherritt's videos, though. If you like pottery, you must check her stuff out.

[@LearnRunes]

This must be about the 4th or 5th time you've spoken on something we'd been struggling to figure out. Thanks for adding such clarity to the world of speech.

[@rae6082]

As an Australian, there’s definitely a spectrum from a more British English accent on the West Coast to very nasal Australian on the East Coast, especially the further north you go up the East Coast - where Michelle B (first girl you showed) lives.

[@roidroid]

To continue: Further north on the east coast you get to north of Brisbane (ie: Sunshine coast), which is where *Steve Irwin's* broad "country" accent is from. Funny enough, all these places are relatively close to eachother, just on opposite sides of Brisbane. To drive north from the Gold coast to the Sunshine coast is only a couple of hours (traffic not withstanding).

[@raphaelnikolaus0486]

The "turtle" (actually "total") example reminded me of the scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, where Mr Gibbs explains to Will Turner that Captain Jack Sparrow used "a couple of sea turtles" as a raft. To me that sounded like "capelacita", an assumed Spanish word that actually doesn't exist. (However, _caperucita_ is a word; as in "Caperucita Roja" for example. Might be misheard as "capelacita".)

[@Vinemaple]

This reminds me of "sicancios," which is how Bran's "she can't see us" was transliterated on Game of Thrones when the Spanish subtitle writers couldn't parse it and assumed it was yet another made-up fantasy word.

[@bakatoroi]

Heh, you reminded me of "In my room", a song from the 80s band Yazoo (Yaz in the US). Spanish is my native language. I always thought it was incredibly weird for the singer to say "Adios amigo" over and over again. The actual lyrics are "And deliver us from evil."

[@tropezando]

These are all amazing mondegreens!

[@emailvonsour]

...what? "turtles" sounds like "capelacita" to you??

[@tropezando]

@@emailvonsour "couple o' sea tu-" = capelacita

[@frencholive_]

as an australian, this was an equally fascinating and painful watch. i’m very very interested in more videos explaining our weird accent 😎

[@SuperNuclearUnicorn]

I love our accent, as a proud user of the most bogan slang out there

[@tolkienfan1972]

Painful? I love the accents in the video. The change from one generation to the next is so fascinating! They want to be a little different, but entirely Aussie! Love

[@jimmux_v0]

@@tolkienfan1972 Speaking for myself, I have never been able to hear this r colour that people keep talking about. Except perhaps some ironic cases (thanks Prue and Trude). Every time someone does a bad Australian accent they seem to insert it. Now that I can hear it, thanks to this video, I realise I've been over-correcting. Fascinating that it's mainly certain demographics, so I'd love to hear any theories on why that is. It does seem to retain those distinctive Aussie elements, while softening the broader accent to make it more internationally intelligible.

[@bzeljn]

this tragic accent only exists on the east coast thank god, i have never heard a single person actually speak this way

[@soniyazas]

I knaurr right?

[@TheOneAndOnlyNeuromod]

Your videos have got to be the most scientifically-approached and most relatable than any others that I've seen. I like how you break down all of the linguistics into not only the phonetics but also the resonances and dynamics of the sounds involved. No one else has been able to explain the Aussie goat vowel so succinctly and thoroughly. This is awesome!

[@monikadawidziuk1497]

In Poland, where I come from, the most popular speech problem is not pronuncing the hard, vibrating [r]. I've just realised that the "bunched r" is actually the sound made by people having trouble pronuncing the [r] correctly! I've always thought it to be more of a Polish [y] vowel, but now I see that the tongue is just a bit more rounded, a subtle difference nearly impossible to grasp. Your videos are so eye-opening and promoting self-awareness 😅 long live phonetics!

[@maciejn5920]

Where in Poland are you from? Where I live [r] is not a phoneme, only a geminated allophone of [ɾ]

[@maciejn5920]

Also, I think you meant to use instead of [] when talking about Polish y; [] denotes phonetic notation, so [y] would be the German ü sound absent in Polish

[@grahamh.4230]

What do you mean by Polish [y]? Do you mean the phoneme that’s spelled with ⟨y⟩ but usually realized around [ɨ], [ɘ], or [ɪ]? It’s confusing to see square brackets used for what I assume to be an orthographical representation rather than a phonetic one.

[@askarufus7939]

In my part of Poland we pronounce j like jj in jeść. Jjesz to? Co robisz?- jjem!

[@grahamh.4230]

@@maciejn5920 Whoops, jinx.

[@Hanszendent]

From a German point of view, it now makes sense to me why I always understood the Australian accent as a wild mixture of American and southern English Saxonian-like accent. because that's exactly how it is, phonetically speaking. This R sound is also spoken in Dresden.

[@nicolajane7389]

A lot of the convicts who first came to Australia were Irish and I thought the speaker at the beginning was from Ireland, I didn’t hear American at all but it makes sense when you realise a lot of Irish ended up in the US and heavily influenced the accent there.

[@sprinkleddonuts6094]

American? No way sounds like a Dialect of British English

[@rotorheadstu]

This is one of the strongest Aussie syllables this North Carolinian noticed upon moving to Australia. Thank you for explaining it so thoroughly (say THAT word with the diphthong slide!). I got a cramp in my epiglottis.

[@unexpectedvistas6198]

This inflection has been driving me nuts when i hear young fellow Australians on social media. Thanks for explaining what it is!

[@fyuuredhijgfzregjjygtdftyi6021]

Oh me too 😖😬

[@RectifyingTCovenant]

This is something that I think has been around for a while, but has become more pronounced among younger Australians. My Mum is 51 and she used to run trivia nights in old chat rooms like ICQ in the early 2000s. Even back then Americans would say that she 'sounded like a pirate'.

[@mvbmvb]

The TV pirate accent is a UK Bristol accent, so they might just be hearing something closer to England.

[@peepeetrain8755]

@@mvbmvb Aussie accent is a mix of many English accents, cockney is generally the most confused but it grew out from a Bristol-Cockney-Irish and any other working class accent mix in England in the 1700-1800s.

[@gysst]

Omg. I never imagined being interested in this topic, but when your videos started getting recommended to me for some reason, every one i clicked i watched till the end. I really like how you explain things, and turns out, phonetics are fascinating!

[@MacGuffin1]

Australia has fairly distinct dialects now based on both socio-economic background as well as geographic ingedients. Hearing another Aussie talk imparts a lot of information about the speaker that is inutitive to most Australians but not well documented in any way.

[@mj.l]

not necessarily. i've met white collar businessmen who speak like ocker farmers, and anarchist punks who have far more refined accents. aussie accents are nowhere near as class-based as british accents - i think it's more cultural/geographic than socioeconomic in many cases.

[@404Dannyboy]

@@mj.l Less class based than British accents or American racial/regional accents but far more class based than American general accents.

[@Hauwke764]

Yep, all these dudes in the examples are rich people, no doubt about it.

[@thevannmann]

Australian accents do not vary as much geographically as the UK and US but there are some identifiable traits. It’s mostly sociolect differences.

[@LoyalSage]

I definitely would have believed those sounds at the start were North American if not for the context implying the question would probably have an unintuitive answer. I figured out what it was during the last couple words. This vowel was one of the first things that got me interested in accents and phonetics, funnily enough when my sister was watching a show mentioned in this video, H2O. She’d be watching it in the other room, and I would just hear all the “Arr Narr” sounds coming from the other room and wonder if that was normal for Australian accents since I hadn’t noticed it before.

[@davidunwin7868]

As as Australian, I have to disagree when you say the linking W isn't a real thing. We have a chocolate called a "Caramello Koala". It is quite easy to here the at the end of "Caramello" and "Koala" when you sing the jingle.

[@roidroid]

That jingle was sung with a partial American accent tho, since it was emulating American blues.

[@jacksonheenan6016]

Great video! As a late-20s Australian with some basic education in phonetics, I'd like to add some colour: At 6:20, I was struggling to recognise r-bunching in my peers' speech or mine. Around 8:38, I realised I had heard it in a friend from Queensland. Sure enough at 9:27, the speaker mentioned working in the Gold Coast, Queensland. I know Australian accents are often just left at Cultivated, General, and Broad. I reckon that could be a result of a lack of research into regional variations, due to our small population. I can tell you that a General speaker from Melbourne could absolutely tell the difference between General speakers from Adelaide and Brisbane.

[@i_love_lamps]

This, 100% In my experience, this r-bunching is most obvious in people from Queensland, sometimes northern New South Wales, and weirdly also Tasmanians. (For anyone unfamiliar with Aussie geography, Queensland touches New South Wales’ northern border, while Tasmania is a long way south from both of them).

[@nijolas.wilson]

I have lived in Qld all my life, this weird R bunching is most definitely not a general feature of Qld accents lol. Watch Kath & Kim they are from Melbourne and often lampoon this kind of speech where people don't open their mouths properly for vowels and O becomes R. If anything, Qld is much more open and rounded in general, think of Steve Irwin - that's a Qld accent.

[@jeffh8803]

@@nijolas.wilson yeah I don’t hear this in Queensland except in some young people. And it’s not a feature of the typical broad country strine accent. If you watch young Aussie KZbinrs you definitely aren’t getting a general Australian accent.

[@passingthorough7667]

It's really bizarre, I've heard it far more more in the Gold Coast than I did in Brisbane, and those cities are less than a hundred km from each other. Part of me thinks it was imported to the GC by people holidaying from one of those southern cities with too much rain, but that's a completely wild guess.

[@nijolas.wilson]

One thing I think that's missed here is sample selection bias - this woman is from the Internet, and I think that's a hugely important factor. When I heard her my first thought was she sounds like she's spent time in America. Even the way she says "people" in "go ahead and message a bunch of people" (around 13:10) sounds American to me. I suspect the fact she's a younger social media influencer and she's a part of this very American world is why she has more of these odd language features than most. Further, the Gold Coast has a distinct "Instagram culture" about it, because it has some very beautiful places. And so that's why I think I, and perhaps others, associate this kind of speech with the GC. The geography doesn't matter so much when the Internet means association is not limited by proximity. And so perhaps even the act of classifying her accent by her physical location (an Australian accent, or a GC accent) actually masks much of what's really happening.

[@ka-li-tzi-n]

I speak General American English, and the first time I noticed this phenomenon was when Emma Watson said the word "no" in one of the Harry Potter films (possibly the 3rd, which came out in 2004). I was astonished by her doing what seemed like "oral gymnastics" to say a two-letter word! 😉

[@randomdude4669]

Yeh to american speakers who are used to their NOwe the British/Australian NOur must be like night and day especially since the american NOwe stands out strong to us

[@heyitskira7056]

H2o the Mermaid show convinced me that this was how all Australians speak 😭

[@DarrellWilkerson4.6]

​@@heyitskira7056nah she's really Bad but kids in city's are the same if not worse 😂 I've heard kids say "brorrr" and trust me that R wasn't subtle lol

[@carlab7927]

As an Australian, this was absolutely fascinating! I'm also astounded by your ability to switch between accents and capture their subtleties so well - clear evidence of skill and knowledge. Thank you heaps for this video!

[@AtomikNY]

"In speech, the main thing is not to perform some particular articulation, but to make the right sound." Thank you! I had a lisp as a child, and through speech therapy I learned to pronounce /s/ and /z/ in a way that sounds indistinguishable from other English speakers. It was only after I got into the weeds of phonology later in life that I learned I articulate them in a radically different way, even though the acoustic product is basically the same. For me these are laterals, where the blade of my tongue is on the roof of my mouth and the air goes around it, instead of blocking the sides of my mouth and channeling the air through the center. I can articulate it both ways now, but I stick with what I'm used to since nobody can hear the difference anyways.

[@TerezatheTeacher]

Yeah, I appreciated that, too. A potential boss at a job interview told me she "could tell" I was a teacher of English because she could see me pronounce an English /s/ in Czech instead of a Czech one. Cue existential crisis and frantic looking up of how to say /s/. She was rights about me forming it weird but that's the way I get closest to what a /s/ sound should sound like. My front teeth are hella weird and other articulations make a much less normal sound in my mouth. So I continue to pronounce /s/ the way that acoustically works for me and feel slightly self-conscious about it. Btw I refused that job, I would've felt uncomfortabke with the boss analyzing my articulation for fun.

[@saskiascott8181]

That's fascinating!

[@PaulVinonaama]

Think of parrots. Their anatomy is quite different but somehow they manage to make sounds we recognize as similar to human phonems.

[@braedenh6858]

That's how I form my Ss and Zs. I didn't know it was different than how others did it. Most people let air flow down the middle?

[@AtomikNY]

@@braedenh6858 Yes, like a "SH" /ʃ/ sound but articulated further forward, where you say T and N.

[@Neon8787]

Great video as always, and a good lesson for Aussies like myself! Many Australians notice and dislike the new bunched r, probably as a result of general resistance to change. When I notice it in someone's speech, it's an extreme case or intentionally emphasized. Most of the examples in this video just sounded 'normal' to me until the sounds were isolated and examined. Now I see that many who complain about this new sound, myself included, almost certainly use it as well without noticing, and perhaps we should all be less critical of the younger generations that just happen to use it more.

[@cassinipanini]

perhaps a case similar to how vocal fry is often denegrated when in actuality is far more common. very interesting !!

[@EH23831]

Just gotta remember not to open your mouth for any vowel! 😂

[@ashuggtube]

@@EH23831we don’t open our mouths because blowflies might get in

[@chris86simon]

Obviusly the title made the quiz at the start easy, but the word "blur" was the one that made it clear to me at least.

[@jergarmar]

Every time I think that one of Dr. Lindsey's videos is going to say something obvious or simple or boring, or something I'm already familiar with, I am proven completely wrong. Amazing video! He puts such effort and polish into each section, into the example that really crystallizes the concept he's trying to get across. But I guess his sense of humor doesn't hurt either, especially delivered with a wry grin, heh. Seriously, it makes a guy want to study linguistics!

[@omegabrandcereal]

Came here looking for a guide on how to pronounce Oh Naur Left here researching postgraduate linguistic courses

[@ethanwilliam7793]

As an Australian linguist, this video was amazing! I've noticed this specific sound coming from more upper-class young Australians, especially on the East Coast (namely in Sydney, Gold Coast, and Brisbane). This isn't as prevalent outside major cities, where you'll hear more of a classic 'broad' Australian accent (think Steve Irwin, but toned down a bit). An interesting tidbit, and this is purely through personal observation, it seems to be much more common in young women, whilst young men often maintain the original accent outlined in this video.

[@Mycenaea]

Women and men making different sounds when saying the same word is a lot more common than people think in languages all over the world :)

[@Lord_Swoledemort]

I’ve noticed the way many Aussie girls talk on tik tok, Insta and KZbin is very different to how they talk in person too. It’s like they put on an accent as they hit record.

[@download351]

@@Lord_Swoledemort This. it's like they play it up for effect. I'm sure they do, they get more clicks out of the 'hot Aussie girl accent'. I rarely hear that accent so pronounced out on the street. And thinking about it, if I were told to lay on a thick accent I'd definitely start talking up in my sinus and start dragging out r's where they had no right being lmao.

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

It doesn't sound 'upper-class' to me. I would have picked it as a marker of lower social status, if anything.

[@nineteenfortyeight]

​@@WiggaMachiavelli they're Valley Girls. Improper speech that only rich people use.

[@bloodsausage6635]

You know how to make a truly engaging video. I’m Australian, and assumed going in I wasn’t going to learn anything since I’m surrounded by people that speak like this, but you truly have a knack for keeping your viewers engaged and presented in a brilliant way throughout. Bravo 😁

[@mrphlip]

Thanks to this video, as an Aussie, I finally can kinda hear what people are talking about when they throw those R's around... Up until now I've been completely unable to hear any R in the Aussie "no", and been kinda baffled by the Internet in general for insisting it is there... but this video got me the closest to hearing it that I've gotten...

[@Shparky]

So, the algorithm led me here, and while I know next to nothing about linguistics, I absolutley love that you're here doing these deep dives into the subject. Thank you for being passionate and engaging.

[@AyValley]

THANK YOU! AMAZING! I'm a young Australian who doesn't have this R colouring, and I *have not* been able to understand TikTok's obsession. I really thought it was a bit made up. Your samples were fabulous. Thanks much for creating this video 🌻

[@randomdude4669]

Nope its 100% there but varies a ton to effectively not doing it to practically saying a dragged R

[@sab6261]

lol

[@justme1492]

There is a school in Melbourne, St Catherine’s - aka St Cath’s - that has its own accent, and has done so for a long very time. It has distinct rhotic vowels. The accent sounds quite OTT, even to girls who went to similar schools. The definitive place to hear St Cath’s accents in sharp contrast to petit-bourgeois accents of the main characters is in a comedy series called Kath and Kim. The late Barry Humphreys, a genius himself, called Kath and Kim a work of genius.

[@RobertJW]

I wonder how much of St Catherine's accent can be blamed on the students having to say "Toorak".

[@download351]

🤣Toorak has the most emphasised "I'm trying really hard to prove that I'm definitely not a bogan whilst being thoroughly bogan" accent I've heard in my many years, so that tracks.

[@AntonFairfax]

If that’s true, that school sounds insufferable af.

[@xopi2521]

You always hit exactly what I’ve been wondering about.I’ve heard a version of it in British English and I absolutely cannot imitate it. I’ve never heard a linguist mention it. Thank you.

[@ammardian]

Watching this video as an Australian boggled my mind, I never quite thought I had that much of an Australian accent until I started saying the words you were using as examples and my. tongue doing quite literally that same glide as I spoke. I've never quite realised just how much of an accent I must have to people who listen to me speak.

[@abigailstaples3686]

omg same! the entire time i've been following along, and just going "f***, f***, F***!!!" the entire time because of how accurate this is!

[@ammardian]

@@abigailstaples3686 yeah the things you never even notice just get you

[@vintage0x]

amazing video as always, Dr Geoff. The original 6 words you showed had me thinking somewhere in Northern Ireland, but knowing you, I knew there was going to be some trickery!!!

[@Zzyzzyx]

Yeah! I was thinking Southern California for the first four, but then the last two made me think somewhere in Ireland.

[@antimatterhorn]

same here. it was the way "nurse" sounded like "nice"

[@TheJamesM]

​@@antimatterhorn And "cars" sounded like "curse"

[@hughmann1118]

The pronunciation of "nurse" made me think the speaker was Irish or from Newfoundland. Thanks for making this content available! Always appreciate your videos.

[@nickwysoczanskyj785]

Yeah, like you, my brain went straight to a broad Ulster Scots type accent. But also with the understanding that it was probably a trap!

[@EmL-kg5gn]

Thank you for explaining this!! This has been driving me crazy. Aussies are usually known for leaving Rs out, for example people from other places would probably struggle to tell the difference between ta (short for thank you) and tar in an Aussie accent. So I couldn’t begin to comprehend how Americans were hearing an R when there isn’t one! I still think naur is a dreadful spelling of it but thanks to you I know what they mean and my mind can finally rest 😅

[@default3252]

Thanks for the consistently amazing videos, Dr Lindsey. This one really blew my mind. It actually reminds me a little of Memphis yod-rhotacisation, which is also fascinating

[@SolidSiren]

While watching this and having fun saying "oh no Cleo" in an Australian accent, I realized when I say my rhoticized R as an American, my tongue does make the EXACT same shape in my mouth as when I say "No" in Australian accent! Australian accent is one of my most favorite to do. I love doing voices and accents. 😊

[@Grainz_music]

When it comes to explaining phonology and dialectology , you’re the GOAT 🐐

[@Ben-kv7wr]

This happens in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese. When an “r” falls at the end of a vowel phrase and isn’t immediately followed by another vowel, standard BP speakers usually aspirate it, and speakers from around Minas Gerais add the bunched r. My partner said realizing this helped him improve his accent in English

[@szyszkienty]

Amazing as always! You're one of the few KZbinrs I give a thumbs up to even before watching a video because I know I won't be disappointed.

[@k1melise]

I clicked because Maddy Macrae. Enjoyed learning about why/how I sound the way I do. I can in fact confirm I say naur on the daily.

[@chrispy2117]

I'd gone completely the wrong direction and thought Northern Irish for the quiz 🤣 Another great video, thank you Dr Lindsey!

[@J75Pootle]

I thought it was some sort of Scandinavian accent!

[@6yjjk]

You're not alone.

[@alexkiddonen]

Thought the same lol

[@juneseghni]

so did I-Belfast sprang to mind

[@snowgirl3522]

as an australian the “naur” thing confused me so much because i could clearly feel it end in a Y in my mouth. had no idea it could be a partly generational thing (especially since i was born in the 00s in melb)

[@B0K1T0]

Funny thing is I had no idea this relatively recent "R" addition to it was a thing.. But I don't hear (young) Australians speaking that much here in the Netherlands. I do remember being fascinated by the Australian 'o' pronunciation when watching Heartbreak High in the 1990's though :)

[@tphotos3485]

absolutely love when people can work through Australian accents like this. there are actually a pretty broad range of Aussie accents, though I guess maybe they haven't been around long enough to distinguish as obviously as they have in America? That r sound has been around for a long time, h2o was a show I watched on TV as it first aired probably 15 years ago now, and the r sound was also part of the camp in Kath and Kim. But yeah, I don't think I do it quite as aggressively, but it's also specific to groups and regions. It varies by state and I'd hazard a guess that KZbinr whose "Naur" you sampled was from QLD. I find the more south you go with major cities (Melbourne, Adelaide) the more British it seems to sound. And regional accents can seem like whole other dialects. I'd be fascinated to hear about how accents change face shape. I've insisted (to mixed reception) that I can tell if a person has an Australian accent by how they hold their facial muscles, it can take you out of movies sometimes when someone doing an accent is holding their mouth wrong/their lips and muscles are shaped differently to the other native speakers.

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

I don't think Adelaideans and Melbournites sound especially similar.

[@nicolajane7389]

Late to this but I’m from SA and currently travelling Australia. Other Australians don’t believe me to be Australian because our accent is so different…..

[@tphotos3485]

@@WiggaMachiavelli I didn't say they sounded similar, but that they sounded more British than from major cities up north, like Brisbane or Cairns. I know they sound different, that was the point.

[@tphotos3485]

@@nicolajane7389 Yeah I feel like I had a similar experience with someone from SA once, you probably get asked if you're English or South African or something. I'm from Sydney and even just in this city accents vary widely to be honest, go an hour or two south or west of the CBD and you'll encounter at least a few pretty specific quirks of language. At least it was like that when I was growing up. I'm in north Sydney now and I've gotten a few funny reactions when my south-Sydney "pl-ANT" instead of "pl-AHHH-nt" sound comes out, or the classic yewws (youse) instead of 'you'. most people just call it bogan haha.

[@thefinkie6459]

It's interesting, because New Zealanders pronounce it slightly differently, but still quite close to Australian. However, I always assumed the reason was because we were influenced by the Maori "au" diphthong (you can hear it far more strongly in people with strong Maori accents).

[@Azmeaiel]

The First thing I thought of when i saw this vid was the 'Oi Nar' meme Aussues have had about NZ for about 10 years...that came from the beached az video.

[@chenilleoneil1289]

The Māori accent is my favourite accent on planet earth, both when it’s stronger and more mellow. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel safe for some reason. I’m an Aussie.

[@thefinkie6459]

​@@chenilleoneil1289 I like it too; might have to agree with you, actually. Kinda proud to have elements of it in my own accent.

[@StephBer1]

This is fascinating. I have always sounded like the first example, or the KZbinr, as is later revealed, and yet people always used to mistake me for an American, without me even trying. It's not until I heard the isolated examples that I realise how difficult it must be for non-Australians to guess where I'm from. My kids speak like me as well, and my husband has always spoken in a neutral accent. My kids used to get really annoyed that we were "the Americans" when we went overseas. Thank you for explaining it!

[@jsa-z1722]

I’m an Aussie born and bred and her accent sounded American to me. I was really surprised when you said “Australian “!

[@Matt_History]

For us Americans she's painfully Australian lol. She might have an in-betweener accent. Like the Transatlantic we used to have in some social classes.

[@mj.l]

@@Matt_Historysounds to me like she's trying to speak in an australian accent that is understandable to americans online. it's something non-americans need to do when visiting the US to simply be understood by most people, and australians tend to slip into that way of speaking (intentionally or not) to make her content palatable to english speakers who are unaccustomed to hearing english spoken in unfamilar accents (namely americans). it doesn't work the other way, because all non-american english speakers have been exposed to US film and television their whole lives, but australian/british/nz etc accents are far more jarring for american audiences.

[@nonWhites_have_to_go_back]

you are delusional, she is increidble australian

[@sab6261]

@@Matt_History In-betweener? You were right the first time. Painfully Australian.

[@Coregame3]

Lay off the crack pipe

[@unknowndeoxys00]

I closed my eyes for the beginning and immediately thought, "yes, I'm ready to hear Naurrr's origin arc"

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Well done! Are you Australian?

[@unknowndeoxys00]

@@DrGeoffLindsey Nope, American! But I've adored the accent since I was a kid. We've had a couple random Australian children's tv shows throughout the 2000s, thanks to Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. Now I'm just tickled at the internet's sudden ribbing of the accent 😂

[@WarrenPostma]

@@unknowndeoxys00 Bananas in Pajamas.

[@ecafireball2766]

I’m Australian and it seems to me that we’re all really deaf to some parts of our accent, I genuinely think trying to guess the speaker from the video isnt much easier for us (if at all) than English speakers not from Australia. Also the accent highlighted in this video is a more regional accent you don’t hear in most Australians.

[@randomdude4669]

​@@ecafireball2766dont worry litteraly everyone is deaf to their accents, americans dont realise their saying NOwe the same way we dont realise were saying NOur unless we try and look for it.

[@MichaelGraham1980]

Thanks for another fascinating video. As a Scot I'd love to see you make a video on the difficulty some Scots have saying purple burglar alarm. There have been tons of videos on the topic but I feel like you might have something interesting to say on the topic.

[@Hooray4Kierkegaard]

Seconded, i find that fascinating!

[@WarrenPostma]

BURRRRRRGLAR ALARUM. WOT, THAT WAES EAUSEAI.

[@stogoshuffle]

This may explain some of my problems when I moved to the US from Australia. When I would spell out my last name, people would hear an 'R' when I would say 'O', and I never understood it until now. It might explain why I often get misheard in the drive through. I will often ask for a 'Diet Coke' but get heard as 'Dr Pepper' for some reason that I could never understand.

[@dylanevans3237]

Another stella(r) video! I think the "blur" and "nurse" pronunciations outed the speaker as unlikely to be North American (as others have pointed out). We Americans tend to pronounce this vowel without a glide, i.e. as a monophthong [ɚ]. Though I have occasionally heard a more open pronunciation, something like [ɜɹ], particularly among black Americans. Also, why did you use 'ʌ' for the onset of the Australian diphthong, instead of 'ɐ'? It seems to me that phonetic transcriptions often conflate ɐ/ʌ/ɜ, which I find confusing as a casual IPA enjoyer. Would be interesting to understand your decision process.

[@WarrenPostma]

The whole freakin IPA confuses me.

[@natara658]

@@WarrenPostma same. it has confused me since I learned about it for the first time at 16 from a friend who's school taught it... and I've been trying to understand ever since lol.

[@jimthain8777]

I like how the sounds of the world's languages morph, and change in interesting ways. Vowel sounds are very fluid to begin with so they seem to change faster than the consonants do. The fact that these various dialects have surprisingly different ways of making the same sound, and yet we hear the same sound, and understand their speech in spite of the differences. Eventually though those differences will become too great and we will no longer be able to understand one another. The up side to that is a bunch of new languages, for everyone to enjoy.

[@lisagd22]

I think consonants remain consistent across languages is because they're formed more, um, concretely? than vowels. For example, it's hard to pronounce M differently because the lips are pressed together, and it's hard to say it any other way. Another example is T, which can vary based on how sharply the tongue touches the roof of the mouth, but an American's "budder" is still very close to a Brit's "butter." Vowels, on the other hand, are formed by the way the open mouth is shaped and moved, which allows for much more variation. It reminds me of how a trumpet makes specific sounds because the player presses the keys, but a trombone player moves the slide along continuum, so it's easier to play a note slightly off. Boy, I hope all that makes sense!

[@Joetime90]

Curious American here, very interesting and thorough. Subscribed!

[@sayrewilkin-dalby619]

This bunched "r" is a brilliant revelation for me. My husband is from Lancashire and we laugh at how he cannot do a passable standard American accent because his Rs are too severe. The only way I could explain it was that it should be more like the R-version of a glottal stop. Now I can explain that, if he can imitate British/Assie "naur" he can do the SAE R!

[@kumkutusu]

Amazing timing! Just last night I pointed out to my British boyfriend how an Australian youtuber was rhoticising a word ending although it wasn't followed by a vowel. He couldn't hear it even when I pointed it out! I didn't make a note of the word unfortunately, but maybe it was related to this.

[@geoschwa]

As an Aussie a can’t hear it as an r, more as a y

[@ginacodding4135]

I’ve run into a lot of Australians that can’t hear the extra r on the end of things that they do 😅 idk why they literally cannot hear it!

[@jeff__w]

​@@ginacodding4135I wonder if it's technically an *allophone* in Australian English, sort of like in English generally where native speakers can’t readily distinguish between _p_ and _pʰ _ as in _pit_ and _spit._

[@jimmux_v0]

@@ginacodding4135 My suspicion is that to an Australian ear that isn't the same sound. My accent is Aussie with a little rhotic influence from Scottish and American influences, but I still hear two different r's in "rooster", for example.

[@randomdude4669]

That's because he also does it just not as extreme since we vowel drag like crazy, and you notice it more since you have a strong W sound unlike our tounge gymnastics.

[@LockBits-ts6eo]

I am a Scot, grew up with Aussies and have an Australian wife of more than three decades, I live in Australia (25 years now), I've lived in England, traveled the world and speak a few languages and am fascinated by the work you do and love your presentation. However, that bit about no Australian putting a "W" in there is perhaps common, but plenty of them do it. I've lived with Aussies around the world since 1976 and can say that there is a greater variance in enunciation and pronunciation than you'd think. The various states have dialects of their own and differences between urban and rural people can be quite distinct. To be an expert on how all of them use language (the Anglophones that is) would require years of travel and work, let alone the kind of expertise that you clearly possess. Even the generation gap highlights significant differences in how words are formed. They're a lovely people with warm colourful language that's a pleasure to my ear. I'm off to photograph some Kowallaz.

[@marcasdebarun6879]

I've been fascinated by this phenomenon for a while, so I was just able to cop that the speaker at the beginning was Australian (particularly with the word 'blur', where I think you can hear the gliding of the diphthong much more easily than the others) once I took into account the rhotacisation. I actually always thought it was pharyngealisation that was mainly doing the work here, so it's interesting to see that rhotacism before consonants almost seems to be creeping its way back into Aussie English! An absolutely fascinating sound change that really makes me wonder if it will become more widespread in other AusEng vowels in the future. As a side note, I wonder if New Zealand English shows the same rhotacisation? Their GOAT vowel also ends quite fronted, and with the influence from AusEng they have I wouldn't be surprised.

[@saskiascott8181]

Yes I always thought it was pharyngeal too but his demonstration of the mystery accent has convinced md

[@randomdude4669]

They do it aswell but not as strong(yet) but there's a video on KZbin of kiwi girls yelling NOur so it's there and waiting for them to join the accent fronting club😂

[@saxumbonum]

I took a linguistics class first year of university a million years ago, and stuff like this is still fascinating to me! I dont remember the phonetic alphabet at all, but I watched this entire video throughly interested in every detail

[@melaniemanning2462]

I was just going to look for this and here it is in my feed! Living in Australia for almost two years was just delightful, a linguist's dream

[@hasname4885]

Thanks, Geoff. I've been hearing this for a while but don't have the tools to isolate it. But I definitely confirm, as a Brit, this is totally characteristic of Australian speakers I hear on podcasts.

[@MatBettinson]

This is brilliant. As an Australian, I've always identified this vowel with South Australians, or at least it started there some years ago, and not even young people either. But it does seem to be spreading! Anecdotally of couse.

[@chrisnewtownnsw]

yep im from Sydney and I said the same thing. I'm certain it's a southern thing

[@lou6804]

@@chrisnewtownnsw Definitely not a SA thing. If anything I would've assumed it's more of an Eastern states thing, but a lot of other Australians from NSW and QLD are saying that's not the case either? Perhaps it's more of a socio-economic factor? No one I know in South Australia (both Adelaide and country towns) is even close to pronouncing words like the young woman in the video.

[@chrisnewtownnsw]

@@lou6804 fair play. I know of a victorian youtuber and he does it so badly that he is the laughing stock of the world. Even the way he says world is more like woerld. I'm having trouble pinpointing which state is responsible for its origins.

[@chrisnewtownnsw]

it's like they say "oh nauru" instead of oh no. "norrou"

[@WiggaMachiavelli]

Sounds like Sydney to me.

[@joaodavid2001]

I must say I'm impressed with the quality of your explanations.

[@christianestrada5362]

Thanks for the video. I'm planning to do some research on Guatemalan English for my thesis. The 'vowel space' perspective has been really useful.

[@groot-z3d]

You know it's gonna be a great day whenever Dr. Lindsey posts a new video 😃

[@madsteph9375]

"i dont like it because its good or bad, but its fascinating" literally the most relatable sentence

[@van-hieuvo8208]

It's crazy how native speakers can do all these subtle sound changes unconsciously. In my arguably futile pursuit of a perfect emulation of native speakers, I have to be very conscious about all the subtle phonetic realizations, like devoicing, fronting, backing, smoothing, breaking, assimilation, coalescence, dark and light l's, r before vowels, etc. These two realizations of the same Australian diphthong are arguably the toughest to be conscious of, in my opinion.

[@MisterIkkus]

I always find it interesting in ESL people who have remarkably natural-sounding English that there will still often be a mix of completely different dialects in there. There's just so much variation in the pronunciation of the language, it's pretty wild.

[@cassinipanini]

a channel i found really interesting is Rachel's English! She focuses a lot on the physical process of speaking, less in a phoneticist way like Dr. Lindsey, but in a way more distinctive of ESL teaching. One of the things she talked about that blew my mind is that Americans actually speak *lower* than many other languages. Its easy to hear when compared to East Asian languages, but even languages like Russian tend to speak from a higher point in the chest than Americans. Very fascinating stuff!! The video title, if you want to check it, out is : Best English Accent - Speak Like A Native Speaker - PLACEMENT.

[@grahamh.4230]

@@cassinipanini The "voice placement" thing, especially the idea that American voices come from a different location in the body, may not be 100% baseless, but it's pretty much a myth. It's often mentioned by vocal coaches and singing teachers, but I think phoneticians and language professionals would generally agree that it's an illusion. The differing qualities we hear between American speech and other accents/dialects/language are caused by differing constrictions made with the larynx and the velum rather than a different "placement" of the voice.

[@naufalzaid7500]

​@@MisterIkkus Yup, off the top of my head, the KZbinr, Kento Bento is one guy who fits this bill. Although his accent is mainly American-ish (e.g. he pronounces all his Rs), the vowel he uses in words like 'saw', 'cause', and 'thought' sounds more British. Really interesting.

[@jeff__w]

​@@grahamh.4230“…I think phoneticians and language professionals would generally agree that it's an illusion.” It would be good if Geoff did a video about it (If he hasn't already). It's something that one hears about all the time.