Zoochatters and their accents

Many Chinese people insist that I have an American accent. I think for non-native speakers it isn't easy to tell.

 

I met a woman at a hostel in Washington who immediately picked that I was from Melbourne. I've never been able to hear the differences, but apparently they're there.

 

Not in Stoke, people are not that far advanced. TLD says I have a strong Midlands accent.
I have been mistaken for someone from Wales, someone from Birmingham and someone from Liverpool.

 

I've heard a broad range of opinions on my accent at university; from people being immediately able to tell i'm from Merseyside, through being vaguely aware i'm northern, to being told i sound 'Oxbridge'-which i'm not sure is an accent, per se.

 

The only difference I've ever noticed within Australia is Bogan, but that's the language, not the accent.



Hix

 

It's a fairly amorphous 'Lowered RP'; your basic middle-class accent. If you knew what to listen for you would find traces of Worcestershire in there, and a forensic analysis might throw up my time studying in the north-east. Because I've moved a fair bit in recent years (in terms of social environment as well as geographically) I've taken to adopting local linguistic flourishes or inflections because it helps me to settle in. Plus the richness of language means that often you are adding 'tools' that British English simply lacks. At the moment, I enjoy the fact that Chinglish allows the breaking of certain grammatical rules which simplifies language without losing meaning. My favourite 'acquisition' from Indonesia last holiday was lightly touching your chest when you say thank you, something I am actively maintaining at the moment.

 

When I was younger it was often claimed that Australia did not have regional accents, but had three accent types, “broad”, “general” and “educated”. Sadly you don’t hear broad often anymore. What I do hear is a “new” accent used by the offspring of some migrant communities, different from other Australian accents.

 

It's remarkable how different people sound when you watch footage from Australia from the 1970s or earlier. It's the accents that 'Australians' have in Hollywood movies, but that sound comically out of place to people my age who never experienced them.

Broad accents do survive, albeit not in the same form, in relatively isolated areas like rural Tasmania, North Qld, NT etc.

 

Am I bothered?

 

I spent a week travelling from Hobart to Launceston and noticed the accent was generally broader and less clipped than on the mainland, and easier for my ear to pick up on.
For such a huge country it is amazing how little the accent varies from Perth to Sydney to Melbourne etc. I think the nearest sounding European accent is a speeded up liverpool.
It is interesting to compare with Britain or Ireland, where each region has a very different accent, from harsh in the north, gradually softening to a near musical lilt in the south.

 

Before my Walsrode trip the only real experience I had with British accents was from a small London trip. One can understand my surprise when I first talked with @TeaLovingDave.

For me, most people apparently hear I'm from the south of the Netherlands. Except one person who thought I was from Friesland (the very north) which has its own uncomprehensible accent (ahem language ) that I don't understand.

 

Actually, now that you mention aboriginals, here on Christmas Island we get regional TV from WA, and there's a few community advertisements directed specifically at aboriginal communities. The aborigines have an accent, and the young ones have an accent - or way of speaking - similar to some of the 'new' migrant accents MRJ mentioned.



Hix

 

A Wirral accent? I’m currently Wirral based and even I don’t know what that sounds like!