How the Aussies got their accent
|Published
'Your hair smells nice'. If they can smell your hair, they're too close. Picture: freeimages.com 'Your hair smells nice'. If they can smell your hair, they're too close. Picture: freeimages.com
London - The Australian accent developed because so many early settlers were drunk and slurring, an academic from the country claims.
The first British arrivals were such big drinkers that the distortion to their speech caused a verbal hangover that persists to this day, according to Dean Frenkel, a communications expert at Victoria University in Melbourne.
He wrote in Australian newspaper The Age: “Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns. For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, drunken Aussie-speak continues to be taught by sober parents to their children.”
Bemoaning the still “slurred” Australian accent, Mr Frenkel said: “Missing consonants can include missing Ts (impordant), Ls (Austraya) and Ss (yesh).”
Previous theories have suggested the Australian accent is a true reflection of the 18th and 19th century accents of British arrivals.
Winston Churchill said the Australian accent was “the most brutal maltreatment ever inflicted upon the mother tongue”.
Daily Mail