English around the world/around Australia

[Tabouli]

Despite recent bite-marks lingering from the last time she discussed inter-Anglophone country differences on the main list, Tabouli continues valiantly in her efforts at reviving Australian patriotism and asserting her country's rightful place at the forefront of the English-speaking world...

David:
> I also like the fact that the majority of list members have 
the 'derivative' text - it gives a suitable mystique to us Brits (and 
Ozzies and Canadians) who are the anointed interpreters of the 
original.


Tabouli nods, mystically, but her brows contract a little to see the common UK mis-spelling "Ozzies" flow from David's fingers.  It is not, of course, impossible that he is winding her up, but just in case she decides to set the record straight... Australia=Oz, Australians=*AUSSIES*.  Pronounced (if not spelt), "Ozzies", *not* "Awe-seize" (=common US mispronunciation).  Sigh.  The tragic fate of a small Anglophone nation, struggling for recognition between two superpowers...

Mjollner:
> I dunno about Aussies, since I've never known any, but I do know 
several Canadians, and they sound more like us Americans than Brits  
in colloquial speech as well as accent!  Though they are *thoroughly* 
ashamed of that fact. :-)

Ahh.  David is, I believe, referring to *written* English, where Aussies (!), Canadians, British South Africans and New Zealanders all fall in, more or less, with UK standard spelling.  In terms of colloquial speech and accent, there's a much wider range, as you know, which I'm all for.  Diversity of accents, a wonderful thing!  Though I confess that I have on occasion committed the nefarious crime of mistaking a Canadian accent for a US accent.  Canadian mouths have thinned.  New Zealander mouths similarly thin when accused of producing Australian accents.  And let's stay well away from the view that Cockney and Australian accents are identical, or *my* mouth will thin (there was some Simpsons episode set in Australia with pseudo-Cockney accents, once.  Respect for Matt Groening across Australia plummetted overnight).  Sure, there's still *some* vocab and pronunciation influence there, but the "music" of Cockney is very, very different from Australian English (nae wo' I mean?).

South African English is something again.  If my vague grasp of history serves me correctly, South Africa, unlike Australia, imported most of its English population from the Top Drawer, and as a result the accent of the British South African owes much to the drawing room and the cucumber sandwich, with influences from Afrikaans.  When I was there, my South African friends used all sorts of Germanic constructions which I'd never heard in English before, like "I'm going to the library.  Are you coming with?" (="kommst du mit" structure, presumably... ending with a preposition, no object required).  Then there was this weird use of "so long", which I've only ever known to mean "good-bye".  They'd say things like "While I'm at the library, will you go to the cafe so long?" Caused me a lot of confusion until I figured out that in South African English it means "in the meantime"...

The Australian accent has some regional variation, as well, though nothing like the regional variation in the UK or US.  When I moved from Melbourne to Adelaide for a few years, I never heard the end of my deplorable Eastern states pronunciations.  Adelaideans pride themselves on being the only state capital in Australia which was never a convict colony, and therefore fancy their English as owing more to the cucumber sandwich than the Ploughman's Lunch plebs in the rest of the country.  Hence they say "plahnt, dahnce and grahph", rather than "plant, dance and graph".  When I used the latter pronunciations, I was loudly derided for sounding "American", and, when I said, no, I'm sounding like an Eastern stater, they sniffed and implied that while the Eastern seaboard had caved in to pernicious American influences, *they* were adhering to correct pronunciation.  Melburnians have been known to sniff that Sydney accents are nasal and unmelodious compared with their own, but I suspect that sniff owes more than a little to intercity rivalry... (storm?  you there, holding up the Sydney side and fighting the good fight against Melbourne of the miserable climate?)

Tabouli.


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