Australian English? It's Bonzer!

An Australian's "greatest talent is for idiomatic invention. It is a manifestation of our vitality and restless imagination".

Baker S 1983, A Dictionary of Australian Slang, 3rd Edition , Currey O'Neil, Melbourne (1st published 1959)

My favorite English has to be, by far, the Australian English accent. I think it’s one of the reasons I saw Crocodile Dundee about 468 times. Australia has three different accents only. Most Australians (80%) speak what is known as general Australian English, the type Nicole Kidman speaks. The broad accent is spoken by about 10% of Australians, mainly newsreaders and those starring in commercials speak with this accent as well as ex-prime minister, Bob Hawke. The remaining 10% speak with a cultivated accent, said to be spoken by another ex-prime minister Malcolm Fraser. This latter accent is not too popular nowadays but used to be as popular as the broad accent is these days. There is also a difference between the sexes; men rarely speak with a cultivated accent, while women don’t often speak with a broad accent. A peculiarity is that there is not much regional difference between accents, despite the huge distances in Australia. It is also interesting that formalities are different compared to other English-speaking countries. For example, a boss at a firm is much more likely to call their workers by their first name rather than Mr. /Miss/Mrs. XY. This may suggest an ease that the Australians have, or it may just be a difference in culture. Either way, most people will agree that Oz English has a greater laid-back feeling to it than either British or American English. Or it may have to do with the influence of smooth vowels from Aboriginal words which have always had a big influence on Australian English. Many Australian words are shortened, leading linguists to believe that this was done in order to smooth down the rough English edges of words and make them more similar to the pleasant sounding Aboriginal vocabulary. Whatever the case may be, the Aussie English is just bewdy!

For some real strine to yabber with, go to:

http://www.abc.net.au/civics/globalcitizens/ozstrine.htm