“Aboot” and “eh?” - I have relatives up there. But not like South Park.
According to the (outdated) old joke, in Adelaide, you ask people what church they attend, in Melbourne you ask them what school they went to, and in Sydney you ask if they have harbour views.
The point here being that Australians did not use and were not aware of accents. I mention that because an English acquaintance, ex foreign office, told me that Australians were wrong, Australians did have regional and class accents, it was just that he, as an Englishman, was acutely aware of accents, and Australians weren’t.
I once traveled to a satellite ground station in Australia. It was a few miles from town, so they had a shuttle bus, which the townspeople inexplicably referred to as the “spice bus”. When I asked how it got that name, I was told, “because it goes to the spice stition”.
And this would have been based on a different pair of vowels (long e as in ‘week’ vs. long a as in ‘wake’). But an Aussie colleague once puzzled me with repeated references to “racehorses”. It took me a while to realize she was saying “resources”.
For clarity, I’d like to re-write:
as:
“because it goes to the spīce stītion”.
In the short-lived Netflix cartoon Pacific Heat with its crude, juvenile humor, of course one of the things they mock are people’s accents (I suppose, for the purposes of this thread, it may be interesting to compare the different cops’ accents), and with the one character from New Zealand the joke is that nobody can understand a word she says.
Well, there’s Boomhauer.
When I first moved from Manhattan to Indiana, I sometimes had trouble understanding people, and it would always be when what they said could be heard two different was. I once misheard “Our house was on fire” as “Our house wasn’t far.” Partly had to do with the unexpectedness of a house on fire.
There’s a “beast friend/best friend” joke in My Life Is Murder that I heard, but didn’t realize was a joke.
In rural Indiana, people do an i/e substitution that causes them to say “since” for “sense,” in “pin” for “pen” to the point that they usually specify “ink pin” for a writing implement.
And back to Lucy Lawless, in Xena, she always sounded more familiar to me than Renee O’Connor did, as O’Connor never fully shook her Texas accent, which also features “since” for “sense.” Lawless was so good, I think I could count her slips over six seasons on my hands, without using my thumbs.
I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin, where there is a distinct “Wisconsin accent” – it’s not unlike the Minnesota / “Fargo” accent, but one of the influences of it is the Walloon immigrants from Belgium who helped settle the region in the 19th century.
When I was a teenager, I worked in my dad’s hardware store, and we’d occasionally have farmers who came in from the surrounding area. Many of them spoke in versions of the Wisconsin accent which were so thick that even I – who had grown up around the “usual” accent – simply could not understand them.
To add: Charlie Berens is a Wisconsin comedian who’s made a career of doing bits using a slightly caricaturized version of the Wisconsin accent, as shown in this clip below:
“Ryza blyds” might be a more accurate prononciation. To-ma-toes (UK), to-ma-does/z (Australian) and ta-may-taz (North American). Stresses on second syllable for last two. This might be the way to discern British from Aussie accents…ask them to pronounce the word “Tomatoes” and see if the second “t” remains a “t” or turns into a “d”.
I was born in UK (5.75 years, British parents) and lived in Australia (5.5 years) during childhood. After being in Canada for over 1/2 a century, my students would be confused as my British and Australian accents would “switch on and off” (their description) during a sentence. If I really try, I can do the “marbles in the mouth” bit or an Aussie accent.
Actually the lead police officer was quite clear. The dark-haired copper wasn’t too bad. The other two…just as confusing as listening to a very strong “Newfie” accent. (The fellow with the gun spoke like one of the characters in Sister Boniface, where the exchange police officer needs to get translations from the WPC.)
I think so, too. The rise up lights is something I’d read or heard elsewhere but it’s the booming vowels that make the difference.
Aussie Ambassadors to the US have given us the following quotes:
That’s not a knoyff.
Bloomin’ oynyon.
Crooyeky!
Toy me kayngaroo down.
Don’t forget Kath&Kim:
That’s noice… Unyewsual
This question is off-topic, but tangential, and not worth its own thread, so I’m asking it here. I will not question a Mod who moves it though.
Just watching an episode on The Brokenwood Mysteries, a show from NZ that I get on Acorn.TV (it’s pretty good). Anyway, this episode had a character called “Jerry Mander.” The plot has nothing to do with politics.
Question: is this term “gerrymander”, an Americanism, known in NZ, so that this would be a joke the general audience would get? or is it possible some writer who knows a lot of world politics trivia (it would be trivia in NZ) knew the term and slipped it in for fun? or is it just a coincidence?
For any non-USanians, “gerrymander” comes from Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who, in 1812, redrew congressional districts to make them more favorable to his party. The result was convoluted districts that people thought looked like salamanders, so they were dubbed “gerrymanders.”
It’s a term well understood in Australia. I’m not quite as sure about NZ but would be surprised if it wasn’t well understood there also.
I’m a white South African, but my accent is Zimbabwean/British.
Even so, I have been accused of being Irish many times.
Some whites in South Africa came from Ireland. Do you know where your ancestors came from? Were any of them Irish?
All British, from Hampshire.
Relatively new arrivals, though. My mum was born there, my dad’s family lived in Rhodesia for one generation before he was born. He died when I was quite young, so I don’t remember his accent.
I’ve read somewhere that all things being equal, your mother’s accent has the biggest influence on your own.
I just did a search of this, and the sources I found say that your peers are more influential than your parents.