How to say this letter proves you’re Australian: voice coach reveals the secrets behind the Aussie accent – and the telltale sign most speakers ‘don’t even notice’
- Australians have peculiar ways of pronouncing ‘r’
- At the end of words, they often drop the sound
- This changes if the next word starts with a vowel
A voice coach and teacher has highlighted a quirky quirk of the Australian accent that many Aussies are unaware of.
Amy Hume of the University of Melbourne pointed out in a Twitter video that Australians often drop the “r” sound at the end of words, something she said was characteristic of non-rhotic accents.
“We only pronounce an ‘r’ when the word is followed by a vowel,” she said.
“So when I say ‘over the river,’ you can hear it as just ‘ova the river.'”
‘But as soon as there is a vowel before the next word, an ‘r’ sound is pronounced.
“So when I make the phrase ‘across the river,’ you can hear me say ‘across the river.'”
Amy Hume, lecturer in voice at the University of Melbourne, says Australians have a habit of dropping the ‘r’ sound at the end of words
Ms. Hume contrasted this with American and Irish accents, which are classified as rhotic, where the ‘r’ would be sounded regardless of what the next word was.
Australian accents also have what Mrs. Hume called an “intrusive ‘r’ sound.”
“It usually happens with words spelled with an ‘aw,'” she said.
“I could say ‘I saw that’ or ‘Draw this’, but as soon as I say ‘I saw it’ or ‘Draw’ and the next sound is a vowel you hear that sneaky little ‘r’ come in.
“There’s a chance you’re doing these things and not even noticing.”
However, one of the commenters said they definitely noticed.
“It’s more than ‘drawing,'” the commentator noted.
‘Any word that ends in a vowel, followed by a word that begins with a vowel, takes on an ‘r’ sound.
So “Tina arena in concert” becomes “teener areener in concert.”
‘Insanity. I vote that we just say the R’s that are actually in words.”
Another asked for more such references to distinctive Australian speech patterns.
“This is amazing… looking forward to the follow up to the ‘Yeah Nah’ explanation,” he wrote.
Ms Hume previously addressed that question during a radio interview with Perth radio station 6PR in January.
“Part of Australian culture is not to offend, we don’t want to make assumptions about other people and we don’t want to offend other people,” Ms Hume said.
Ms Hume said Australians also tend to insert an ‘r’ sound into words ending in ‘aw’, such as draw
Ms Hume (with an image of Glenn Robbins playing the cartoon character Russell Coight in the background) said the Australian accent is one of the hardest for an outsider to learn
“That’s why we say a statement as a question.”
Ms Hume said that the standard Australian accent came from an amalgamation of several British accents, but that it was very difficult for people from abroad to master.
“All the accents are determined by the shape the tongue makes in the mouth, and when you’re a toddler, the muscles of your tongue and your lips align with the language you speak and the sounds you make,” she said.
‘Of course you don’t even think about that, but the tongue comes to rest in a certain place in your mouth.
‘With Australian accents, the tongue muscles sit quite low in the mouth, and with other accents in the world, the tongue sits a lot higher.
“So there’s quite a bit of work to relax those muscles, which makes it very difficult to acquire the setting or form needed for Australian sounds.”