Where Are YOU From? (country, Europe, title, quote, Hang)

Seltzer · 01-02-2010, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lateralus

^ That is a pretty accurate description, nicely done

I'm one of those weird Australians though that say "dance" and "chance" with the same pronunciation as "father" - although it's a bit hybrid. And this could possibly be because my mother is a New Zealander and would've had some influence on me growing up I suppose...

Seltzer, you were born in Australia right but you live in New Zealand? What kind of accent do you have, or have you noticed your accent change as you've lived in a different place? I find stuff like that really interesting as both of my sisters moved overseas when they were about 18 and I've noticed changes in the way they speak since. Accents and their behaviours are so odd.

Mmm the dance/chance vowel sound is a point of common regional variation in the Australian accent. The NZ accent has some variation too - it's non-rhotic except in the case of some Southlanders who, as a result of Scottish immigration, really emphasize their 'r' sounds (especially noticeable when they say words like bird). And there is also some Maori variation.

And yeah that's right, I moved when I was 13. I lost my Australian accent pretty quickly (within 2 years of coming here) - well I guess I didn't lose it so much as it morphed into some weird but harmless Australian/NZ hybrid. I'm envious of people who don't lose their accents like one of my teachers from high school who moved here 15 years ago from Australia and still sounds completely fresh. I do wonder what would have happened to mine if I'd moved over as an adult but I guess you've answered my question there.

I find accents, dialects and language in general to be fascinating. I was reading a book on animal behaviour about 5 years ago which talked about songbirds having regional accents which makes sense given their mechanism of song learning. Maybe tore knows a bit more about it?