Would it be proper for someone to make the comment, "You're not from Oz, or you'd speak Strine."
The speaker is a well educated Australian bushman, talking to someone from speaking American English.
Would it be proper for someone to make the comment, "You're not from Oz, or you'd speak Strine."
The speaker is a well educated Australian bushman, talking to someone from speaking American English.
not really. Very few people ever spoke the slang and accent known as Strine. This is especially true since 1950 as most of the Strine speakers were lower level rural workers from the more remote rural areas and had a lower educational levels which resulted in their poor pronunciation. Increases in the general education levels in the late 1800s and early 1900s did a lot to kill of the strine accent and many of the words used. A well travelled Bushman wouldn't speak strine, but would likely use many of the common Australian slang words.
Strine is a lot more than just saying shiela or g'day as it includes an accent and almost every word said is slurred in some way. The best description I've heard of true strine is to imagine a Cockney talking with a Glaswegian accent laid over it - very distinctive.
"I could tell you're not an Aussie as soon as you started talking," might be an appropriate replacement.
The Aussie accent is sufficiently different that just about every Australian can tell the difference between Aussie and not Aussie as soon as the other person opens their mouth. The accent tends to get stronger as you get further from the big cities.
Having said that - Australia has had a lot of immigration in the last 50 years from non-English speaking countries and as a result there are many folks particularly in the cities who are Australian but don't have the distinctive accent - their children do though. And many immigrants who speak English tainted by their country of origin, do eventually pick up a bit of an Australian twang even if it isn't strong.
We can usually pick out North Americans by their accent but have trouble picking between Canadian and USA accents and few us would have a clue about where in USA the accent might come from.
Edited to add: When I write Aussie, it's pronounced with a hard "ss" so it sounds to Americans like "Ozzie". Where I am in Melbourne, I've seen people write Aus and Aussie but rarely Oz or Ozzie. What about you Ernest?
Hope this helps
We can usually pick out North Americans by their accent but have trouble picking between Canadian and USA accents
Shouldn't be that much of a problem if the Canadian is from Quebec.
Where I am in Melbourne, I've seen people write Aus and Aussie but rarely Oz or Ozzie. What about you Ernest?
Every Australian born person I know writes it as Aussie and it sounds more like Aw-see with an 'A' and loud 'S" sound, while most Americans say it with an 'O' and hard 'Z' sound.
As to Australian accents; there are a few with the most variation being between the Western Australia coastal area, Darwin, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, the rural farming Australia, and the remote cattle ranching Australia. In the more cosmopolitan areas of the major cities where many migrant communities set up post WW2 those born from 1950 through to about 1990 have many people with an accent that is actually a non-accent because of the mix of the many imported and local accents resulted in the children not developing due to none of them being regular and common enough to stick. However, that trend has been reversing for the last 30 to 35 years while heading toward a more uniform accent across Australia due to the electronic media and higher levels of travelling to other states for education and work.
The other aspect to keep in mind, is those who've grown up with the non-accent are natural mimics and rarely notice they're copying another person's accent while talking to them if the person has a strong accent. This often leads to the other person taking the Aussie for a non-Aussie due to the mimicked accent.
As I said in the earlier post 'Strine' itself is virtually dead now. I doubt there's a single person alive today who grew up in a community or family where the true way of speaking strine was used on a daily basis because I think they'd have to be well over 100 years old for that to be true. There are a few people who've heard natural strine speakers and can mimic if if they try. However, what's more important is much of the slang used in strine has become part of the common Aussie slang, and a lot of people wrongly think the use of the slang is strine.
"You're not from Oz, or you'd speak Strine."
Why use a line that almost everyone not from Oz wouldn't understand in the first place? It's like a bad inside joke.
Would it be proper for someone to make the comment, "You're not from Oz, or you'd speak Strine."
The speaker is a well educated Australian bushman, talking to someone from speaking American English.
Actually, it's far more likely that such a person would simply say: "You're not an Aussie!"
The Australians I knew, and I knew them long ago -- 1960s -- could speak Strine, but they didn't unless you asked them to.
One of my Evanston characters sings Waltzing Matilda. how authentically she sings it is another question.
The speaker is a well educated Australian bushman, talking to someone from speaking American English.
The speaker probably started off with a very strong accent but this would have softened during the education. Would normally speak with a noticeable but mild accent but could slip back into broad Aussie if asked or if back with mates from the bush.
The speaker probably started off with a very strong accent but this would have softened during the education. Would normally speak with a noticeable but mild accent but could slip back into broad Aussie if asked or if back with mates from the bush.
That's me: 43 years in Australia, 19 years in the US. Still have an Australian accent - but it's stronger when I'm back there.
One thing about how Aussie's speak - quite often, the pitch of their voice rises at the end of a sentence, as if they are turning a statement into a questions. Almost like the Canadian habit of ending a sentence with 'eh?'
In every country when you talk to someone from another part of the country you start thinking "Man you talk funny."
you start thinking "Man you talk funny."
Then you say it out loud.
Then you wake up in the hospital and two days after that you remember you were talking to a woman. :)