Not my strange accent but the Australian wog accent. Yes, wog and I use the word in a respectful manner as this post would be lacking without the word. You could call it an Australian Mediterranean accent. Think Greece and Italy. It is delightful and I find it rather stimulating, if you get my drift. It comes with promise of exciting times.
The accent is dying out and not heard so often now. Nowadays the newborn of immigrants speak with an Australian accent by the time they become adults. It wasn't so with the Mediterraneans. The first Australian generation developed their own accent. If you memory is first class, I did mention about hearing a school student from a lower socio economic area on a tram saying, 'And he arsed me to give him the answer'.
This clip is just a bit amusing but the performer gives a great example of the Aussie wog accent.
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My German father didn't have an accent - unless he was in the grip of strong emotion. Anger particularly brought his accent front and centre.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting EC. I suppose it is not uncommon but I've not thought about it.
DeleteYes, EC. I had a relationship with a German one time and when he and I got emotional his W's slipped into V's and my English went Hibernian and we barely understood each other. We'd fall apart laughing.
DeleteXO
WWW
That must have funny to witness too, WWW.
DeleteWhat a fun and fascinating post! And EC's comment makes a lot of sense; it's amazing how that works. Be well!
ReplyDeleteYes, EC's comment was interesting. No accent at all, but it comes out when emotional.
DeleteI like it!
ReplyDeleteYou are revisiting the old time classic. Now there is so much conformity
ReplyDeleteProbably not, Roentare.
DeleteBlogger won't let me play the clip but I would have been interested to hear it (with my hearing aids in of course).
ReplyDeleteWe get quite a variety of accents up here. It's fun trying to identify where people come from by the way they speak.
I'm sure you do hear a variety of accents JayCee, and yours wouldn't be a Manx accent?
DeleteAh no, more Home Counties, which seems to provoke much hilarity here 😉
DeleteIn America everyone has a different accent from South to North to East to West and for the square states in the Middle.
ReplyDeleteBob, I like the quite neutral American accent, the Bronx accent and the southern drawl excites me somewhat.
DeleteInstinctively, I do not like the term "wog" even though it is acceptable in Australia when referring to folk whose roots are in southern Europe - mostly Italy and Greece. In Great Britain the term is considered to be nasty and blatantly racist. Interesting cultural difference.
ReplyDeleteYP, it wasn't always acceptable here, but those who were classed as such embraced the word for comedic purposes and the word became almost neutral.
Delete"Wog" is still a potentially offensive term, discretion advised if you cannot identify as one, in which case you are entitled to reclaim it as with other derogatory terms. But it's hard to think of a substitute for that special second-generation Mediterranean background Australian accent.
DeleteI reckon the word largely lost its sting because popular antipathy moved on to more recently arrived groups. It's a bit like how the great sectarian divide (ie Catholic/Protestant) has faded away.
A lot of the accent feels like a mirroring back of the broader Australian accent as it has been heard by immigrants. You used to hear all sorts back in the days when NESB station attendants were in command of the microphone to make announcements. To me a particular characteristic comes from Australians' habitual prefacing of any vowel, especially after an initial consonant, with the "indefinite" vowel ("schwa") - (eg: "beaudie!").
There is also a rhythm aspect which I lack the technical skills to describe, and the rising inflection - particularly evident in this clip.
PS: as Andrew mentioned, he's a comedian. The accent is exaggerated and he doesn't talk like this irl.
DeleteMC, while I can't pinpoint the year, the Australian Catholic/Protestant divide just died so suddenly. I don't know why.
DeleteThe NESB station attendants were the same here, quite unintelligible but if you watch Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, it was a world wide problem.
I've noticed Anglo Australians uplifting the end of sentences to make the sentence like a question. This is especially apparent on the execrable ABC Macca on Sunday mornings.
Australian English is as interesting as English in any other country.
Until he mentioned Sydney, I would not have guessed that man was Australian. I suppose I would have thought he was from somewhere in the British Commonwealth, I just don't know where.
ReplyDeleteKirk, and he wasn't from the Commonwealth, beyond Australia.
DeleteInteresting. Thank you Andrew. Aloha
ReplyDeleteCloudia, every day I hear different accents, as I expect you do too when you are out and about.
DeleteI was trying to see if I could understand his without reading the subtitles but I must admit, I couldn't stop looking at the subtitles. My ear is not exposed to enough accents to be able to distinguish between them.
ReplyDeleteDebby, in spite of his accent, his speech is very clear to me.
DeleteI loved it! Sweet memories of hearing people speak in the streets of Port Pirie where I grew up. There were as many Greeks and Italians as there were English people. I still hear traces of that accent here in Adelaide, where my daughter married into an Italian family and the grand daughter married into a Greek family, though the accent is only in the oldest generations. Do you remember the movie Wog Boy?
ReplyDeleteSure River, Wog Boy. Wogs out of Work, and other performances. The tv show Housos featured the accent as did Fat Pizza. The were cringing really, but very funny.
DeleteP.S, the Greeks were "wogs" and the Italians were "dagos" thought you can't say those these days.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember my grandmother saying wogs, but certainly dagoes and Eyeties. She did use the words with any malice.
Delete8+ million people have migrated to Australia since World War II ended, so it was inevitable that their European and Asian accents affected their lives in this Anglo-Saxon nation, and affected our vocabulary as well.
ReplyDeleteThis morning a shop keeper took my money for an object, saying "Thank you, would you like..." And I answered "Ahhh a South African :)"
She had migrated in the 1990s!
Nice story Hels. I recently saw a clip explaining how the Australian accent developed by the children of convicts from numerous British areas.
DeleteLovely name, a wog which referred to either a Greek or Italian down here and was always used with affection and no one minded at all, dagos were the Italian people, and they didn't mind either.
ReplyDeleteThat man in the video, I do believe he is a comedian??
Margaret, the words could be used badly if you added a swear word in front of them. I expect the man is a comedian and he has learnt the accent.
DeleteAccents are culture indiacators.
ReplyDeleteThey certainly are ME.
DeleteHe is easier to understand than most Australians.
ReplyDeleteTP, his diction is quite good.
DeleteI am learning a lot about Australia from your blog Andrew. All I will say about the Australian accent is it is not muted but pitched at many different levels.
ReplyDeleteThelma, not muted but pitched at many different levels....hmmm.
DeleteAndrew, I just saw some photos of Flinders Station decorated for the holidays. Being suspicious, I wonder if you could get us some Melbourne Xmas photos?
ReplyDeleteAround Toronto, we have every imaginable accent!
I have already Jackie and I'll take a few more. Things look best when lit at night but making that effort is stretch too far.
Delete