Talk:Australian English

The comment about deadpan humour is not limited to Australian English. Perhaps it belongs on the Anti-Americanism page. When Americans tell an outlandish story they will be very quick to add, "It's only a joke." -- just to avoid a lawsuit. I try not to tell Americans when I'm joking; to do so would be to insult their intelligence.

I don't think we (Australians) use deadpan humour purely to embarass Amerkins - it's a regular feature of communication between us. And whoever added that comment also noted that it is a British trait as well. It could also be added that Amerkins (in general) don't grasp the "friendly put-down" and take offence rather easily. So I do think it is quite fair to observe that (in general) Amerkins don't get deadpan humour (as used here). In their defence a handful actually do, and they can actually be pleasant to have around. (Well some of the time, anyway, until they start acting like they actually understand what good coffee is). MMGB

I was trying to be NPOV with that comment, in that a) Australians do use deadpan humor a fair bit, amongst themselves as well as to foriegners, b) it is inherited from Britain, and c) Americans don't (generally) use it in a similar way, thus leading to a fair amount of cultural confusion. I'm not trying to imply that Americans are stupid, merely that they don't have the same learned response to run every such story through the BS detector and laugh if it goes off. I thought it was relevant in that it is one of the major causes of confusion when conversing between Americans and Australians. As to our view of the United States, it is a highly complex one, and varies greatly according to personal experience and political outlook (and is a discussion for another page). --Robert Merkel

Vowel shift. I would like to add a paragraph along the following lines. Does it make sense to anyone? Comments? cferrero 13:04 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

The Australian (and New Zealand) pronunciation of English words, with respect to a "standard" British pronunciation (the definition of this, of course, is contentious) has undergone an effect known as vowel shift whereby the spoken sound of certain vowels has shifted. This is best illustrated through the following example where the sound of the letter 'a' has shifted:

Written word	Austrialian pronunciation	Approximate Australian vowel sound
Bad	Bed	e as in tent
Bed	Bid	i as in kid
Bid	Bead	ee as in free
Bead	Biyd	no equivalent in British pronunciation

Thus the effect is of a→e→i→ee→iy.

An interesting theory! Let me have a go at commenting on it.

Bad >> Bed: This is classic NZ accent. Oz is more like "baird" or perhaps "beared" as in "polar bear". They are quite different.
Bed >> Bid: This is characteristic of NZ, not really Oz. A strong Oz accent here leaves the sound of the "e" largely unchanged, but shortens it so that it's almost not there.
Bid >> Bead: Oz: more like "beard" or "bi.i.i.id" - i.e., same as UK but say it really slowly. NZ, not sure.
Bead >> Biyd: So far as I can tell, no equivalent in Australian or New Zeland pronunciation either! Sounds more like an extreme US regional accent to me - I've head it on TV often enough, but don't know which area. Somewhere in the south maybe?

Tannin 13:33 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

Well I could modify it to include both Australian and New Zealand variation, in which case it should perhaps go into a linguistics article rather than a specific Australian language article? The sound I was trying to convey with biyd is actually pretty hard to write, it involves a sort of tongue-rolling vocalisation at the back of the throat which British-English speakers don't do. Maybe more accurate as 'beyd'? cferrero 15:35 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC) (It's not my theory, by the way - I read it in New Scientist a long time ago, but can find no trace of it now...)

The word larrikin seems to be in vogue right now, in this period of serious introspection, to describe a particularly Australian form of dead pan humour. An Australian myself, and having spent eleven years from age 24 on, in Europe, I am more aware of it than most ordinary Australians. I have experienced this humour from mildly ironic, thru laconic to sadonic (sick or black). It recentley took me three days to engage my inner Virtual Interpreter to translate every apparent insult into it's opposite ie Silly Old Bastard meant completely the opposite. I believe it's origin lies in the Sparten word Laconic meaning terse and rude and might probably have been used by the petty thief; english (larceny). Either way it is extremely difficult to engage in any meaningfull conversation. user:Jus

There are some distinctive variants on the Australian accent - for example the "Brisbane" accent

PMelvilleAustin 14:09 22 May 2003 (UTC)

People claim that from time to time, other people refute it. The language experts I have heard speak on the question (two or three) are reluctant to agree with the idea, although they don't reject it absolutely. On the whole, the consensus seems to be that trying to disentangle regional accents from all the other variables (age, gender, social class, education, amount of alcohol consumed, and so on) is such a difficult task that it is difficult to justify calling the variation real. And if real, it certainly isn't something I'd care to try picking in a double-blind test. Tannin

One possible theory on why Australians call "peppers" capsicums may be to avoid confusion with the other form of pepper, the ground or unground berries of the genus Piper. What term is generally used by American or British English speakers to refer to table pepper? Is just "pepper" used, or "cayenne pepper", or what? thefamouseccles 10:10 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's black pepper, or white pepper as opposed to a green pepper, or a red pepper. Both the colour and the need for an article (peppers are countable items, pepper isn't) remove ambiguity. When I'm asked whether I want pepper on my salad, I know that the waiter doesn't mean peppers. -- Derek Ross 06:28, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Note that it's an overstatement to say that the diminutives/abbreviatives are unique to Australian English. Although the -o ending hasn't been much used outside the upper classes in Britain since the 1940s (aggro is the only common exception that I can think of offhand), the -ie diminutive is widely used in Northern English and Scottish dialects (including terms like biccie, etc.) and the -za or rather -zer endings are also used although they form a subclass of the -er ending (Bazzer, rugger, etc.). It would be fair to say that these endings are more commonly used in Australian English rather than that they are unique to it. -- Derek Ross