### Author:  [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/1 "2012-03-17T23:05:35Z")
Whenever I see Australians on TV, they just sound Australian to me. Am I just seeing the Australian equivalent of a BBC accent or a midwest American accent? Or am I just not picking up on nuances?
Britain and America have a ton of regional accents. Is Australia as varied? And if so, can someone give me an obvious example?
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/2 "2012-03-17T23:35:14Z")
There are significant variations in the Australian accent, but they are social, not regional. There are a few distinct regional differences in language (mainly slang), but not accents. See here:
> **[Variation in Australian English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_in_Australian_English)**
>
> Australian English is relatively homogeneous when compared with British and American English. The major varieties of Australian English are sociocultural rather than regional. They are divided into 3 main categories: general, broad and cultivated.
> There are a number of Australian English-based creole languages. Differing significantly from English, these are not considered dialects of English; rather, they are considered separate languages. Notable examples are Torres Strait Creole, spoken on...
Are the Aussies you hear on TV actors on shows made overseas? If so you’re probably hearing the general accent.
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/3 "2012-03-17T23:57:50Z")
Hmm, on re-reading I shouldn’t have been quite so unequivocal. What I should have said: regional differences in accents do exist, but they’re so slight compared with other factors that they’re essentially useless in determining a speaker’s region.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/4 "2012-03-18T00:04:16Z")
> [@tellyworth](#):
>
> There are significant variations in the Australian accent..
That’s really, really stretching it.
I very much doubt if one person in a million outside Australia could possibly distinguish between these supposed Australian accents. Most Australians wouldn’t be able to make the distinction since, as the article notes, the supposed accents are defined by “likelihoods” of using certain linguistic traits, the accents don’t map to region, education or social class, and they form a seamless continuum.
Hardly significant.
> [@](#):
>
> See here:
>
> [Variation in Australian English - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_in_Australian_English)
As with so many Wikipedia articles, I would take that one with a grain of salt. Not least because Julia Gillard’s accent is so bizarre that it has been the source of endless speculation and amusement. It is utterly unlike the accent of any region that she has ever lived in (or any region of Australia as far as anyone can tell). Yet that article holds it up as an example of a “typical” accent. :dubious:
> [@](#):
>
> Are the Aussies you hear on TV actors on shows made overseas? If so you’re probably hearing the general accent.
Yet the Wikipedia article you just cited suggests that exactly the opposite is true. Actors such as Paul Hogan or Steve Irwin use an over-broad (and in both cases mock) accent in overseas productions. The normal Australian accent is more likely to be found in domestic product.
The best example I can think of of someone using their normal accent in a production is the actor who plays Chase in “House”. Sounds entirely natural, as opposed to that of Irwin or Hogan, who don’t sound anything like that off-camera.
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/5 "2012-03-18T02:51:19Z")
> [@Blake](#):
>
> That’s really, really stretching it.
> I very much doubt if one person in a million outside Australia could possibly distinguish between these supposed Australian accents.
Given that the ear of most Americans has trouble distinguishing British from Australian this is very likely true.
Australians can distinguish, and there are also some very subtle regional variations that you can use to guess, with something a bit better than chance where someone comes from. But you would not want to bet money on it. These are more tonal than proper accent differences. Queenslanders tend to sound a little harsher than say South Australians. I found when travelling abroad I could usually guess where a fellow Australian was from. But it wasn’t reliable, and the differences were something you had to consciously listen for.
There are also regional peculiarities, but these are oddities rather than real accents. A well known one is that pronouncing the letter H as ‘haich’ sounding the ‘h’, is often the mark of someone who attended a Sydney Catholic school. But it turns up elsewhere, isn’t fully reliable, and is more a scholastic quirk. There are also accents that stem from particular migrant communities. Melbourne Greek for one. But these tend to get diluted with time, and the children of most migrants have accents indistinguishable from mainstream Australians.
> [@](#):
>
> Not least because Julia Gillard’s accent is so bizarre that it has been the source of endless speculation and amusement.
I can state with absolute authority that Julia did not sound anything like she does now when she was a student. She was softly spoken and without any trace of the grating harshnss she now displays. Nor did she speak with that annoying school mistressy attitude. It is a great source of puzzlement to quite a few of us as to how she obtained the accent she has. She is Welsh born, raised in Adelaide. She was schooled on the more well to do side of Adelaide where no-one speaks anything like she does now. She then moved to the rigours of the Melbourne union scene. Maybe she decided she had to sound hard and harsh to survive there. There is some irony that whilst her acquired accent might have helped her in her formative political years, it is now something of an electoral liability. Australians don’t relate to it as genuinely Australian. Mostly because it isn’t.
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### Author:  [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/6 "2012-03-18T03:21:15Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> Given that the ear of most Americans has trouble distinguishing British from Australian this is very likely true.
\
A minor quibble but I would say Australian and _English_ accents are more similar, and would go further to say Australian accents and those from the **south-east** of England are more likely to be mixed up. I have a ‘London’ accent (although it’s more ‘Home Counties’ which border the city) which would be described as ‘BBC English’ by some non-natives, but have been mistaken for Australian on two occasions - one of those times I was in a group whose majority was Australian.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/7 "2012-03-18T04:32:11Z")
I am surprised to hear there is not more regional variation, even to Australian ears. After all, it is a huge country, with many of its major settlements very far apart. How often is someone from, say Perth, going to interact with someone from Brisbane, for example? You would think the accents would quite rapidly drift apart.
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### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/8 "2012-03-18T04:46:35Z")
I had an Australian roommate once (with a “general” Australian accent) and I talked to his mother on the phone. I was surprised that she sounded so…posh, so to speak!
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/9 "2012-03-18T05:26:58Z")
> [@Blake](#):
>
> That’s really, really stretching it.
>
> I very much doubt if one person in a million outside Australia could possibly distinguish between these supposed Australian accents. Most Australians wouldn’t be able to make the distinction since, as the article notes, the supposed accents are defined by “likelihoods” of using certain linguistic traits, the accents don’t map to region, education or social class, and they form a seamless continuum.
I’m not really sure what we’re disagreeing on here. I agree entirely that there are essentially no _regional_ differences between accents in Australia. But it’s certainly true that the Australian accent varies significantly - [cite](http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/australian-accent#variation). I’m not claiming the differences mean anything, and I really don’t know if foreigners can hear them or not. But to locals the variations are plainly obvious.
Quintas, there are audio examples of broad, general and cultivated accents at the link above (unfortunately very short). Can you hear a difference?
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/10 "2012-03-18T05:41:03Z")
> [@hogarth](#):
>
> I had an Australian roommate once (with a “general” Australian accent) and I talked to his mother on the phone. I was surprised that she sounded so…posh, so to speak!
Lots of fairly recent immigration from the UK to Australia. She might have been born in England.
Sheesh, I’m still struggling to tell the difference between Kiwis and Aussies. If I force them to say certain words, I can, but just given a random clip, I usually can’t. I wouldn’t even try to distinguish different regions within Australia.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/11 "2012-03-18T06:09:14Z")
> [@JustinC](#):
>
> I have a ‘London’ accent (although it’s more ‘Home Counties’ which border the city) which would be described as ‘BBC English’ by some non-natives, but have been mistaken for Australian on two occasions - one of those times I was in a group whose majority was Australian.
I find that odd. “London” English and Australian English don’t really sound at all alike to me. Do you really find them that similar? I could see someone who has no experience with UK and Aussie English lopping them all into “not American English” and just taking a shot in the dark with one or the other, but I can’t see anyone who has had significant interaction with the two accents as mistaking one for the other.
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/12 "2012-03-18T07:31:25Z")
> [@JustinC](#):
>
> A minor quibble but I would say Australian and _English_ accents are more similar, and would go further to say Australian accents and those from the **south-east** of England are more likely to be mixed up. I have a ‘London’ accent (although it’s more ‘Home Counties’ which border the city) which would be described as ‘BBC English’ by some non-natives, but have been mistaken for Australian on two occasions - one of those times I was in a group whose majority was Australian.
I don’t really have a problem with the typical “BBC” accent. I watch Top Gear all the time and wouldn’t mistake those guys for Aussies at all. However, I would swear [this guy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2wtWvpcts) was an Aussie if his page didn’t say he lives in the UK. What kind of accent does he have?
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/13 "2012-03-18T07:44:03Z")
> [@](#):
>
> However, I would swear this guy was an Aussie if his page didn’t say he lives in the UK.
You must be joking. OK, you aren’t, but he is very clearly English. No Australian would ever mistake that accent. I would put him somewhere in the middle of England. Too soft for the North, but way off London or South. How about Birmingham or close about. A Brit would have a much better idea.
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/14 "2012-03-18T07:53:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I would put him somewhere in the middle of England. Too soft for the North
I was close, but a bit far South. Outer Manchester area. I should have picked it better, I have relatives that live nearby. There is certainly some Manchester in his voice, but not as bad as some, so I had him picked as a bit further South that where he lives. Maybe because he is to the East and right on the outskirts it helps soften it a bit.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/15 "2012-03-18T08:02:28Z")
> [@tellyworth](#):
>
> I’m not really sure what we’re disagreeing on here. I agree entirely that there are essentially no _regional_ differences between accents in Australia. But it’s certainly true that the Australian accent varies significantly - [cite](http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/australian-accent#variation). I’m not claiming the differences mean anything, and I really don’t know if foreigners can hear them or not. But to locals the variations are plainly obvious.
I suspect that most people won’t pick the difference between the first two, aside from the first to being spoken faster because it isn’t a prepared speech. The third should be plain enough if you hear a long enough segment because it is a prepared speech being delivered in a forced and carefully enunciated manner.
They sure chose some weird examples.
Bob Hawke’s accent was famously fake, and almost as widely derided as Gillard’s, though better done. As numerous people noted at the time of his leadership, he was doing a bad Chips Rafferty impersonation, and Rafferty never made any secret that his accent was as fake as all get out. Paul Hogan famously quipped that Hawke’s accent was broader than his “Hoges” accent, which was as broad as he could produce with great effort.
Hawke was raised by English parents, in an middle class suburb of Perth, attended a prestigious and selective school, then one of the finest universities in the country, then was a literal Rhodes scholar and PhD candidate. At no stage prior to becoming an union leader did he ever exhibit even a trace of such a broad accent, which is unsurprising since there was nowhere that he could have \*learned \*such an accent.
Bob Menzies, the final speaker, was enunciating very clearly because it is the beginning of his carefully speech announcing that Australia has entered the war, and it was intended to go live to a national audience using less than stellar audio technology. That isn’t the way Menzies actually spoke, it was his public speaking manner. There’s a short snippet [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPS5WvSGBt0)of Menzies speaking more informally, and I would challenge anyone outside Australia to distinguish between this accent and the middle accent in the examples you linked to.
In fact I will go as far as to say that \>95% of Australians wouldn’t distinguish between Whitlam’s and Menzies accents’ when they are speaking informally.
And these men are held to be “classic” examples of their accent types. Hawke’s accent is obvious to most Australians precisely because it was notably unlike any accent used by anyone else, but I doubt anyone outside the country would be able to detect any difference.
Hardly a significant difference.
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/16 "2012-03-18T08:05:05Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> How often is someone from, say Perth, going to interact with someone from Brisbane, for example? You would think the accents would quite rapidly drift apart.
People don’t stay put.
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/17 "2012-03-18T08:12:14Z")
> [@JustinC](#):
>
> A minor quibble but I would say Australian and _English_ accents are more similar, and would go further to say Australian accents and those from the **south-east** of England are more likely to be mixed up. I have a ‘London’ accent (although it’s more ‘Home Counties’ which border the city) which would be described as ‘BBC English’ by some non-natives, but have been mistaken for Australian on two occasions - one of those times I was in a group whose majority was Australian.
I would personally share your opinion on the first part of this, but I don’t think you can draw too many conclusions from your accent being mistaken for another. I’m from the US living in Ireland and my accent has been mistaken for northern Irish (_lots_ of times), western Scottish (once) and - yes- Australian (twice). Some people just aren’t good with accents.
> [@njtt](#):
>
> I am surprised to hear there is not more regional variation, even to Australian ears. After all, it is a huge country, with many of its major settlements very far apart. How often is someone from, say Perth, going to interact with someone from Brisbane, for example? You would think the accents would quite rapidly drift apart.
I’d be interested to see what actual linguists have to say about this. My assumption would be that the lack of variety is due to the relative recentness of English-speaking settlement in Australia, similar to the US and Canada, and that in fact regional accents probably _are_ diverging [just as they are in the US](http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/changin/), but at rates that might not (yet) be perceptible to the ordinary person’s ears. But again, it’s only an assumption.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/18 "2012-03-18T08:35:50Z")
> [@ruadh](#):
>
> I’d be interested to see what actual linguists have to say about this. My assumption would be that the lack of variety is due to the relative recentness of English-speaking settlement in Australia, similar to the US and Canada, and that in fact regional accents probably _are_ diverging [just as they are in the US](http://www.pbs.org/speak/ahead/change/changin/), but at rates that might not (yet) be perceptible to the ordinary person’s ears. But again, it’s only an assumption.
From what I’ve read, linguists ascribe it to three factors: size, diversity and mobility. Age doesn’t really enter into it since many regions of Australia have been settled at least as long as regions of the US that have their own accent.
For an accent to develop, you need generations of people to all agree that certain pronunciations and cadence is correct. You also need a large enough population that they can resist pressure from other, potentially more influential, groups to conform. When the population is small, mobile and diverse, that can’t happen.
Essentially until the early 20th century only south-east Australia and Perth were “permanently” settled. There were towns in other regions but they were population was surprisingly fluid. That was especially true of the populations of professionals such as doctors, solicitors and teachers who almost invariably came from somewhere else. It was also true of a large segment of the workforce who were frequently moving between towns. Because of that mobility there was little chance for regions to develop accents before the influence of the professionals forced it back to compliance with the South-East accent.
The small size of these regional populations also meant that any accent that may start to develop only had a small number of adherents, and could be easily forced back into conformity by a tiny number of outsiders.
The other issue is diversity. Australia never had areas settled exclusively by specific groups the way that the SE of America had a French influence or the SW had a Spanish influence. Australia was overwhelmingly settled by people from the British Isles, but never from any particular _part_. As such local regions never had a chance to develop an agreed local accent that could resist the pressure from professionals to conform to to the SE accent.
With the rise of mass communications in the twentieth century, the scope for accents to diverge became much less and that probably halted any diversification of accents on the continent. That’s not to say the accent isn’t changing, just that it’s changing the same way everywhere.
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/19 "2012-03-18T09:13:37Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> Given that the ear of most Americans has trouble distinguishing British from Australian this is very likely true.
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#):
>
> You must be joking. OK, you aren’t, but he is very clearly English. No Australian would ever mistake that accent.
Why would you say that we have trouble distinguishing a British accent from an Australian accent, and then when I say I usually don’t but do in this case, you act surprised?
I’ve probably watched more British television than the average American, but still not much. And I’ve only watched a handful of Australian shows. The guy sounds more like Steve Irwin than Jeremy Clarkson to me. That’s just my take on it. I’m thinking you’re an Australian so of course you’re not going to mistake the guy for an Aussie no more than I’d mistake someone from Alaska for a fellow Texan.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2012, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-big-regional-accent-differences-in-australia/616085/20 "2012-03-18T09:43:14Z")
> [@snailboy](#):
>
> I’ve probably watched more British television than the average American, but still not much. And I’ve only watched a handful of Australian shows. The guy sounds more like Steve Irwin than Jeremy Clarkson to me.
And you are entirely correct. The accent is sufficiently close to Australian that it can’t be distinguished \*instantly \*even by an experienced ear.
The biggest giveaway that it isn’t Australian is actually the cadence, which is quite melodic, whereas Australian is very atonal. The next most obviously difference is the pronunciation of “ul” as in “ultimate” to rhyme with the “ool” in “wool”, whereas any Australian would rhyme it with the “ul” in “gull”.
But neither of these are changes are something that I would expect an “outsider” to detect.
> [@](#):
>
> I’m thinking you’re an Australian so of course you’re not going to mistake the guy for an Aussie no more than I’d mistake someone from Alaska for a fellow Texan.
Absolutely. And I think there’s a lot of that going on in this thread.
The differences between Australian and some British accents are plain to the experienced, but only marginally significant. The differences within the Australian accent are so trivial that I seriously doubt that Australians could accurately place a person in one specific accent.
Contrast these difference with what I would consider “significant” accent differences. Compare the the typical Foghorn Leghorn “southern” accent against a California accent, or a Beatles Scouse accent against a Prince Charles received pronunciation. Nobody would possibly confuse those accents for one another.
No differences even remotely approaching that magnitude have ever developed in Australia, or even between Australia and New Zealand.
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