The Minutiae of Australian Accents

[@careercrim]

Describing Australian vowel length to differentiate words and not using "can't" as an example.

[@sancheeez]

that's a bull ant. kill on sight! give no quarter! Anyway, I often compress whole phrases by phoneme omission. Frinstance, the word you say when someone is getting ready to leave a party in the suburbs: "Janeemimumaca?" meaning, "is my vehicle obstructing your vehicle?" or if you're heading down to the takeaway and offering to get something for your friend/housemate/sibling: "yunning shop?" (sometimes the more formal "mona shopshiunning?") Southern tablelands/ capital region.

[@Nick-sp2bq]

Past tense of spin is spun in my (Queensland) English... span sounds a lot more fun though :(

[@pepebriguglio6125]

Brillant video. Every little minute 'my-new-share' was tantalising. You are certainly acutely observant. Awake to all audible details, aswell as to the range of analytical ramifications to consider 🙌💯

[@stop_drop]

I could listen to you talk about phonemes for hours

[@Nooticus]

real

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

i'm taking this as a challenge

[@richardbaker2701]

This video had me pausing a hundred times pronouncing words going “huh I didn’t even realise I did that”

[@Marlo_Strannik]

Cute twink linguist alert!!!!! Just found this channel and I love

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

thank yoooouuuu 🥰

[@julienandross]

the diphthong flattening is happening in young american speech too. in my area weve been consistently pronouncing "about to" as "badda" in casual speech, and "our" sounds identical to "are" for me. "hour" is still pronounced distinctly tho.

[@historical.isolde7918]

Your "Good book" sounds very Kiwi! Perhaps that is where that pronunciation comes from? I am surprised that we don't have more similarities with general NZ accents.

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

I don’t think it comes from NZ exactly, but I do think it’s one of many strange examples of NZ English pre-empting the development of Australian English. The same thing’s happening with L-vocalisation, how most Kiwis do it already and now it’s spreading through Australia as well.

[@SinInTechnicolour]

11:05 "Tower" reminds me the Bushed Poetry song 'If you don't eat pussy then you're a fucking coward' and all the creative rhymes for 'coward' Mario found

[@Nooticus]

At 4:01 where you show the two lists of different words, I see some differences to how I pronounce a couple of them, which is interesting as I definitely speak with a Southern English accent/dialect. For me, 'dad' has the short vowel sound, whereas 'swam' could potentially be pronounced with either the long or short vowel sounds, but I think the long is more natural and also probably more popular here. Isn't the past tense of 'spin'... 'spun' ?! I think so! maybe its different in Australian English. Here, you don't hear the 'sh' sound at the beginning of 'street' or 'straight' very much, maybe some old people from the East End of London, like people who speak with the Cockney accent or people from Essex will use it. Maybe also the 'estuary accent', but definitely not used by most 'middle-class' people here. Your dad's accent is kinda wildddd i must say hahaha, it reminds me of that australian politician who says something like 'if you're gay then, you know, by all means, BUT IF THE ALLIGATORS' (its not alligators but you know the guy I mean) You say 'good book' basically identically to how I do, which is really intreresting. I mainly pronounce 'our' almost identically to 'are', but of course 'hour' I pronounce differently. I've never realised the nasal-ness of Australian English but compared to I speak I think it definitely is nasal. For me, I use the same vowel for all three of 'your', 'tour' and 'immure'. Yeah that 'ass' with a long vowel is definitely from American I expect. I mainly use the 'arse' pronunciation for the spellings 'ass' or 'arse', but sometimes for the spelling 'ass' I might use the 'ass' pronunciation with the short 'a', rather than the long 'a' like you show. That ant is ridiculous wtf...its like something from a rainforest, ive never seen anything like that This video was excellent, definitely one of your best. The editing and family friend contributions were excellent, I always enjoy pronouncing stuff to myself while watching your videos haha Also, sorry this comment is so long, I hope you don't mind, but I've recognised something in your speech (particlarly yours!) that is quite unusual! Quite often, especially in this video, at the end of words you make an 'uh' sound very quickly. A couple of examples; 'interesting' at 14:03, 'as well' at 15:43, and a very prominent one on 'English' at 16:05. I expect this interesting feature of your speech might either be from your queerness or from your neurodivergence? I'm only pointing it out because I find it fascinating, I hope this doesn't make you overthink it at all!

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

Yeah, the Bad-Lad Split is common in the south of England too! Just not to the same extent, I don't think. I think "span" is correct in Australia. In my head it's "I spin, I span", but "I've spun" also sounds correct-ish. Yeah he talks very similarly to the crocodile guy hahaha. If you want to listen to some similarly wild accents from my world, go to www.dialectsarchive.com/australia, where the seven most recent samples have been submitted by me! :) My dad is sample 38. Samples 39-44 are our family friends, all from rural areas (40 is Jon and 41 is Greg. I particularly reccomend 43 if you wanna hear a *really* broad accent!) In the south of England, the pronunciation of "good book" is also kinda central, but much higher. I think for you it'd be more like [gɵd bɵk], whereas for me it's more like [gɤd bɤk] Thank you for the praise!! I also think this is my favourite video I've done thus far (I really hope the view count eventually comes to reflect this...) I have noticed that I do that "uh" thing!! Thank you so much for pointing that out, I find that so funny. To the extent of my knowledge, it's very common in my demographic so it's not surprising that I do it.

[@Nooticus]

@@RheaDawnLanguage oh... i think it did the thing where it deleted my comment again... uhhh?!

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

i don't see anything :( that's been happening a lot recently. do you happen to remember what it said?@@Nooticus

[@Nooticus]

@@RheaDawnLanguage not really unfortunately ): how did you eventually manage to find it last time?

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

@@Nooticus I didn't :( I just asked you if you remembered what you wrote lol

[@tests-wo5vf]

imagine geoff lindsey watches this video and he reaches this point 14:25

[@skyworm8006]

I also say span for past tense. And I say bring-brang-brung more so than bring-brought-brought, though I use both.

[@Aritro77]

Great video mate. You have a very southern Pommy or South African sounding way of pronouncing the vowel in words like like "half" and "laugh" which sounds a bit like "Hawf" and "lawf". Are your origins from one of those places? If you're a Perth boy, I'm thinking the latter is plausible? Also, who are these people saying "ass" the American way, unironically? Dear oh dear.

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

born and raised in the inland Midwest with Aussie parents. I have that really backed vowel because of a chain shift that a lot of young people have, where the vowels in “kit”, “dress”, “trap”, “strut”, and “bath” move down and backwards in the mouth. A lot of us have different variations on it, and different vowels are effected more or less. For me, my “kit” vowel is much lower than normal, and my “strut” and “bath” vowels are (as you noticed) a little further back than for most. But if you listen to a lot of people my age (particularly those who are also nerdy) you’ll hear something quite similar.

[@Aritro77]

@@RheaDawnLanguage I'll defo be keeping an ear out for the "bath" vowel thing. I've defo noticed the lower "kit" vowel among the youth, and it's actually the change that I associate most with Gen Z. I think it sounds like the American "kit" vowel more than anything and was wondering if that was an American pop cultural import. Thoughts? Your accent is actually fkn fascinating. There's a lot of things going on that are old-fashioned in a way untypical of your generation and then some that are more typical, and then there's the unexpected Yorkshire sounding emphasis on final position -g, such as in "something". I notice someone else pointed that one out in the comments as well haha

[@historical.isolde7918]

@@Aritro77 I have found at times @RheaDawnLanguage swaps between an almost Kiwi slant, to full blown ocker Broad AusEng- especially when they are cursing! But now I think about it, I can hear the slight Yorkshire, but that is not unusual given Perth's high British immigrant population. My grandad came over from Yorkshire in the 1960s. Even after all these years he will freely say in his northern accent, "It's the best ten bob I ever spent!".

[@MonkOrMan]

9:55 I actually think of the very backed and rounded [ʊ] as quite distinctive of Australian and NZ English. I'm pretty sure most dialects of English have a vowel that is at least somewhat fronted and unrounded. I have a Standard Southern British accent and my favourite undocumented feature is that my FOOT vowel has become so fronted and unrounded that it's actually phonemically merged with schwa. So _4-wood_ and _forward_ are both said the same (if I don't put secondary emphasis on _wood_ ). Or at least they would be if I didn't pronounce _forward_ with the /uː/ vowel from _fall/fool_ - the only instance of the vowel occuring not before a /l/, proving that it's separate from GOOSE and THOUGHT but that's a whole other thing lol.

[@borscht7743]

it's quite interesting because Geoff Lindsey's pronunciation dictionary has /ɵ/ instead of /ʊ/ for "book". It also has "ʉw" instead of /uː/ for "goose". It's almost as if Australian English and Standard Southern British English are evolving to a similar place regarding their vowels, similar to Lindsey's video on how Northern England and New Zealand share more vowels than people would expect them to.

[@MonkOrMan]

@@borscht7743 yes, although the NZ/northern england thing is actually the exact opposite. Their vowels have shifted so much that they correspond extremely well to DIFFERENT vowels in the other accent

[@blackletter2591]

Psychologically, words in the past tense feel better with the shorter "a". Done, gone. While words to describe the present and future will sound better drawn out. Anything could happen. God, just heard you say ' gud buk.' Jesus, you sound like SA there.

[@blackletter2591]

Are you pronouncing the g at the end of your 'ing' phonomes? Where is that from?

[@RheaDawnLanguage]

Im very inconsistent with how I pronounce “-ing”, sometimes I release it with a plosive that’s actually a weak “k”, like “somethink” and “nothink”. Other times it might also become “-in”