this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Ask An Australian

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Very noticeable. It’s as noticeable as any other accent imo. And y’all have accents whether you think it or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What do they sound like to you ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

That's a bit like asking what the colour red looks like to others, but we will very quickly recognise a US accent. We have US TV, US movies, US youtubers, US news, just constantly around us all the time. We're very familiar with the accents.

I know accents pretty well. I picked up a US accent living there as a child and worked extremely hard to sound Australian again when we moved back to Australia, and I've also done a lot of acting involving accents. You can learn about various accents and listen to samples at the international dialects of English archive: https://www.dialectsarchive.com/

That doesn't tell you much about what Aussies will think, but it is interesting, especially if you want to learn how we might pronounce things.

Most Aussies wouldn't know it consciously, but on an unconscious level they'd recognise New York (George Constanza, HEY I'M WALKIN' HERE), Bostonian (Bill Burr, Good Will Hunting), Appalachian (Forest Gump, Deliverance), Texan/Kentucky (Justified, those nice boys on Supernatural, cowboys in general), West Coast (surfer dudebros), midwest (Fargo), and received pronunciation (news readers, college educated in general), AAVE (Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson), and probably a few others I can't remember off the top of my head.

Generally visitors will say that people here are really friendly to them. Public transit is good, especially in cities and places tourists go. Sydney is the most beautiful harbour in the world (no bias here of course). Anywhere you go or eat within shouting distance of the harbour bridge is going to be nice, if a bit pricey, and I would recommend just about anywhere on the harbour that you can reach by ferry. If you go past the heads you deal with sea swell so you'll want sea legs for that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Exactly the same as it sounds to you. It's just that we don't think our accent is unusual and you don't think yours is unusual.

[–] whostosay 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Wait, do Aussies use y'all or are you just repeating this from OP

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No we don't say y'all. Often it's 'Youse'

[–] whostosay 1 points 7 months ago

Apparently in the US, using y'all isn't professional but I opt to not give a shit because it's efficient.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] whostosay 1 points 7 months ago

I've only heard of it used some sections of the southeast US so it caught me off guard. I thought we were spreading