Did drunken settlers give birth to the Aussie accent?

Fox News ^ | October 29, 2015 | Sum Gai

[sparklite2]

In an opinion piece in The Age newspaper, public speaking expert Dean Frenkel claims the "Australian alphabet cocktail was spiked by alcohol."

"Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns," he wrote. "For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, drunken Aussie-speak continues to be taught by sober parents to their children."

[mitch5501]

PI gzars

[Mr Ramsbotham]

More likely the early settlers, being transported convicts, were the dregs of British society whose accents and manners of speech were the absolute worst of the worst.

[PeteePie]

I don’t know but I’m guessing infants and toddlers gave rise to Ebonics, JMO.

[dsrtsage]

That’s not a knoife

[Dr. Sivana]

I knmew an Aussie girl in college. Her accent was cute.

[Tennessee Nana]

Oy Voy, mate !!!

[Tennessee Nana]

Ya must have been smeetten to think that !!!

[stylin19a]

wasn't Australia an Irish penal colony ? Probably accounts for everything.

[Tennessee Nana]

“For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, drunken Aussie-speak continues to be taught by sober parents to their children.”
________________________________________

So that’s their excuse..

West Island of New Zealand...set adrift...

[Autonomous User]

Well here is to you Drunken Australian prawns on the barbie speaking drunk off your ass down under brothers from another mother. You are Real Men of Guinness .

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[BitWielder1]

Does it explain Irish and Russian too?

This is bunk. Split a population for a generation or two and each group will then think the other groups have an accent.
There are plenty of accents within UK already, and modern Englishmen probably sound nothing like they did 200 years ago.

[yarddog]

One hint we can get is their poetry.

Sometimes the old English poems have rhyming words which do not rhyme to us.

[Dr. Sivana]

Ya must have been smeetten to think that !!!

I could have been, but wasn't particularly. She was a bonnie lass with a pleasant countenance or whatever they say in Australia as well. The campus had a good number of pleasant co-eds, just one with an Aussie accent.

[tet68]

It’s hot in here, turn on the Aig Nishner.

[SkyDancer]

Just like the accent in the UK? Or New Zealand? Just like some say the reason Aussies call each other 'mate' is because it comes from 'inmate' since Oz started out as a penal colony.

I've heard that nonsense time and time again. And then there's this:

"G'day, cobber." "G'day, mate. How're ye doin'?" "Aw, been flat out like a lizard drinkin'. Hear the Sydney Swans hammered Collingwood on Saturday?"

"Ripper."

Cobber is archaic and you can always tell a Yank when they use that term.

Anyway, 'mate' is of UK origin and simply means friend. And yer mate is closer to you than your sheila or wife.

[Army Air Corps]

Oh, I am quite familiar with “mate”, thanks to some Aussie acquaintances. I thought that you might enjoy the article what with having lived o’er there.

[SpinnerWebb]

oy, ya fink it’s ott in ear? turn ton yaseff.

[Spirochete]

I watched Youtube documentaries on this once and learned there are three Australian accents: The "broad" accent used by Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin, the general accent heard from Olivia Newton-John, and the cultivated accent which sounds somewhat more like a BBC announcer's pronunciation.

There are regional variations of these. They have the trap-bath split, meaning some "a" vowels sound flat and some sound like "ah".

One thing I love is the peculiar sound of broad pronunciations. The broad "phone" pronunciation sounds sort of like an American "phoiewn", and the broad versions of "shark" and "shack" sound like "shack" to my ears.

It's an fascinating topic, but I researched this a few years ago, and can't remember it all.