Sorry for the posting, slight editing and then re-posting
Please take pity on a SDMB virgin. I’m trying to get the hang of this !
-We all have to start somewhere-
Maybe the moderator will take pity on me and delete my posting faux pas !
I probably couldn’t tell an Englishman from an Aussie BUT if you were to take an Englishman and and Aussie and ask each of them to speak I could EASILY tell them apart then. Aussies speak VERY different.
NZ’ers (Kiwis) sound like Aussies but Aussies are NASAl. Again it is hard to tell them apart but put them side by side and you can.
I remember when Prisoner was on American TV it was very easy to tell them apart. Except Judy who for some reason I didn’t realize was American till it was pointed out.
Coming from Western Australia, and with friends in Victoria and New South Wales, I’ve noticed that within Australia there are slightly different accents.
Victorian accents seem to be a bit more nasal. Western Australians have a bit more of a drawl - eg. we say “be-ah” for “beer”. NSW accents sound rounder and more pronounced.
In Queensland, a friend has told me (a while ago now) that they call luggage “port”. Something like that.
The traditional test for a NZ accent is to ask them to say the number “six” (“sex”). The test for a South African accent is to ask them to say the word “park” (“pork”).
well to me Australians & Brits sound completely different.
Where as i can barely tell the difference between an American and a Canadian.
…there is the old South Park “aboot” to go by, but that’s it for me.
I think I’ve posted these somewhere else, but I can’t find the link, so I’ll put 'em here:
In New South Wales, or more precisely Sydney, the New Zealand accent is having an effect. The Sydney accent is fast and clipped, and vowels are lazy. The neutral ‘schwa’ vowel is common everywhere in Australia (hence “Melb’n” and “Brisb’n”), but moreso in Sydney - and it’s almost universal in New Zealand.
Victorians transpose ‘a’ and ‘e’. So ‘Melbourne’ becomes ‘Malbourne’, and ‘album’ becomes ‘elbum’. The pronounce ‘castle’ in an American way as ‘cass-le’, not ‘cah-sle’ like those in NSW do.
The Queensland accent is slow and drawly. It’s probably what Americans think of when they think of an Aussie accent. They end their questions with ‘ay?’ (“It’s hot, ay?”).
In South Australia (or “South Austraya” as the locals call it), the letter ‘l’ is dissapearing. ‘Hill’ becomes ‘hiw’, and ‘fatal’ is ‘fatoow’.
Western Australia seems a little similar to South Australia in accent, but maybe not quite as er… pronounced.
The Northen Territory has an accent similar to the Queensland one. The famous Aussie term of affection ‘mate’ is seldom heard here: ‘bloke’ is used instead. “Wanna beer, bloke?” ‘Bloke’ is universal in Australia, but not in this uniquely NT sense as a form of address. Normally, it just means ‘guy’.
Tasmanians tend to be well-spoken and can often sound (slightly) British to the ears of a mainlander.
Kiwi living in Australia here.
I always laugh when I hear/read Aussies talking about the “six” thing saying that it sounds like “sex”. When I was at school we use to tease an australian girl because when SHE said “six” it sounded like “sex” (or more accurately “seex”) where as I openly admit that the Kiwi “six” sounds a lot like “sux”. I suggest that when a Kiwi is asked by an Aussie to say “six” and says “sex” then they are probably quietly taking the piss out of the Aussies accent
I can tell a Canadian if they say out, about or some such word “oot”, “aboot” etc.
Quick breakdown on accents within NZ:
(Very broadly speaking, generalisations galore)
The North Island accents tend to be stronger and get stronger the further north you go, these creatures are the worst offenders in terms of rising inflections (something that Aussies are also guilty of) and exchanging every vowel sound for something between a “u” and a “i”.
The middle/top South Island which is made up largely of farming communities tend to speak a little more “correctly” and have a more neutral accent which can be difficult to tell from a mild Aussie accent or a very mild English accent.
South of the South Island and you apprrroach those that rroll theirrr "rrrrrr"s.
Having worked in the tourism industry for some years I have quickly learned to ask “where are you from?” rather than asking a scottish person “what part of Ireland are you from?” or a Canadian, “How’s the States at the moment?”
The simple question “where are you from?” can save one from all kinds of international embarressments.
Of course the reply “Guess” or “Where do you think?” is analogous to a woman asking you to guess her age and is a good indication that the conversation is about to take a turn for the worse 
…you might not have been to Perth in a while. A strong influx of South African migrants over the past 20 years and isolation from the rest of the country means that the accent is definitely different to a South Australian/East Coast accent. I can really hear it in football commentary.
I work here in HK with a number of Aussies, all from the east coast, and none from Perth. I went back to Perth for a holiday a few weeks back. Western Australians have a distinct drawl, but otherwise it sounds almost English.
One thing I have definitely noticed is a rural Australian accent. To me this sounds like the accent Loaded Dog attributed to Territorians (complete with use of the word “bloke”).
Really? Everything I’ve read about this phenomenon (which linguists call “uptalk”) suggests that it originated in Australia.
An article from today’s Age on uptalk.
And IMHO the key to most Strine accents is to make all vowels sounds as much alike as possible.
The original question was “Why is the Australian accent still similar to the English accent, while American and Canadian accents are completely different to English?”
The answer would lie in a couple of things… first, Australia is only 213 years old - that’s 213 years since the first boatload of Europeans arrived here to live. America has a few years on us, giving their accent more time to develop (when did the Mayflower arrive??).
The second thing that I think would have influenced this is greater diversity of nationalities settling the US. In the beginning, most Australian settlers were English. During the gold rush, more nationalities came over and made their mark, but for the most part we have an English heritage. On the other hand, (as I understand it) various parts of the US have been owned by France and the Netherlands in the beginning. There’s also probably influences from the native peoples of both countries, including the Australian Aborginials and the Native Americans, though this would be limited.
A third contribution probably stems from immigration policies. Where America accepted immigrants from all over the world, Australia had the “White Australia” policy, which restricted immigration on the basis of appearence. By limiting the bloodstock to fair skinned people, they limited the languages that could influence our accent.
Another factor that probably should be taken into account is lifestyle. Northern Americans have a different accent to Southern Americans, and this seems to correspond to their differing lifestyles. Southern life is portrayed as more laid back, a slower pace, and they have more of a slow drawl. Northern Americans speak faster just as they live faster. Life in the Australian colonies was no doubt slow - being months away from their homeland, the first settlers would have spent a lot of time waiting. I think there would have been a slower pace to life here, much like in Southern America, and that’s why we tend to drawl a bit.
I’m Australian, born and raised. I’ve never been out of the country. Mr Cazzle was Malaysian-born of an English-born, Australian raised father and an Australian mother. He spent the first five years of his life in Scotland, then he lived in the US for about ten years. He’s been in Australia for 10 years now. His accent sounds more American that anything else (to my ears), but it is slightly blurred by a Scottish twinge, and well softened by years of living in Australia. He sounds like an American who has been in Australia a long time (which is sort of what he is). Yet when we speak to our American friend he says I sound English, but Mr Cazzle sounds completely Australian to him!
I can recognise a Canadian accent quite easily, it can often be quite distinct from the US accent.
But I can’t explain how I can.
The answer could lie in millions of places, all depending on whose ears you happen to be using.
IMNSHO the Australian accent is no more similar to the English accent than the American or Canadian accents are.
I would also like to know where evilnick is from
I think it is honestly a matter of opinion which accent is closer to English, though I’m sure one of the dopers is a linguist and will prove me wrong sigh again. 
For instance, the South Africans may be closer in some words, however the Aussies are closer in vowels, but the Kiwis clip their words like the English, but the… etc
Guano Lad - in addition to “aboot”, Canadians have a distinct way of saying “Sorry” - it sounds like Sore-y. Long O sound. That’s the only distinction I know 
Cazzle, I think that’s it. It’s just a unique twang that I can just subtley pick up in a few words. I can usually pick a Canadian very easily just after a couple of sentences, though there are exceptions of course. And I sure wouldn’t be able to imitate a Canadian accent short of the ‘oat and aboat’ thing.
This is obviously just a perceptual thing then, because to my British ears, there’s a lot more difference between British(Oxford or London) and Australian accents than there is between American(generic) and Canadian.
Although the Scottish accent of the far north might as well be Norwegian for the trouble I have in understanding it.
The Canadian way of saying “about” and other words also occurs in some parts of the Northern U.S. It is referred to as “Canadian raising” meaning that the “a” part of the “au” sound is raised to a schwa.
Here is some more information and some examples.
besides, how could you objectively measure such a thing as difference between accents?
hi all,
i have heard differences between canadian and american accents.i have also heard differences between aussies and kiwis. differences between english and austrailian . and definately they are differences between english and south afrika. i can also differentiate between many different english dialects.
k
I have it on good authority that the Glaswegian accent is one of the lesser known consequences of The Fall - along with labour pains, b.o and the need to weed the garden on your weekends.
Gp