So long, Strine, as Aussie accents go posh

WHENEVER I catch a glimpse of a gum tree in some foreign locale I am tempted to give it a hug and say, hello old friend.

The Sightgeist: Jon Kudelka

WHENEVER I catch a glimpse of a gum tree in some foreign locale — California’s San Jose, perhaps, or the Golan Heights in northern Israel — I am tempted to give it a hug and say, hello old friend, you’re a long way from home. I feel something similar (without the urge to hug, as I am not really a hugger of strangers) whenever I am overseas and hear the Australian accent. I always want to approach and say “G’day mate”, or ­perhaps “G’day cobber”, depending how ­vernacular-’ish and ancient I am feeling.

The Australian accent is a thing of beauty. It is not, as British writers sometimes suggest, slovenly, flat or undifferentiated. It is instead richly subtle, replete with countless gradations of irony, mockery and humour. The national ­accent and the national style in humour are closely related. Think not only of Hoges but of Roy and HG, Kath and Kim, or, more anciently, Steele Rudd, Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Lennie Lower.

The best effort to render the Australian drawl in print came from John O’Grady, writing as Nino Culotta in his Weird Mob books. He would run words together splendidly and phonetically, producing such perfect locutions as: ‘Owyergoin’ mate, orright?’

There used to be such an accent as Educated Australian, which somewhat rivalled Received English or BBC English. It was indeed the type of accent you once typically heard from ABC news presenters. It is a wonderful thing to listen to old newsreels and hear the speech patterns of the likes of Don Bradman or Robert Menzies, two of the most perfect Australian accents of their type.

I remember watching a newsreel of Bradman remarking, at the end of a long cricket tour of England, that while his team had greatly enjoyed England and English hospitality, they couldn’t wait to get back to Australia “to be among our own folk’’.

Although Educated Australian was a little different from the most working class Australian, overall our accent betrayed little of class and almost nothing of geography, whereas, even today, an English accent reveals region and frequently class, with the toffs mostly sounding like Prince Charles without fog horn.

You will nonetheless be surprised to hear that I detect a little decline in the beauty and range of our accent. In particular I am displeased by the nation’s most uncharacteristic effort to become upper class by lengthening the “a” sound in many words. The Australian accent is at its most inimitable in the “aye’’ sound, as in today. Hear an English or American actor trying to sound Australian when they say a word like today and you always get some mangled version of cockney. They can never quite get that unique combination of a and I that Australians alone produce.

But we are making a tragic national error in trying to lengthen the naturally short “a” sound in words such as chance, to make it rhyme, roughly, with aunts instead of ants. As a child I never heard Australians pronounce words like chance, demand, prance, answer or plant with a long a. Actually, I tell a lie. I did have one aunt, a beloved and kindly woman, who nonetheless had about her some airs and graces. She was the first person I remember trying to sound posh by use of the long “a”sound. My parents good-naturedly but mercilessly mocked her when Bonanza, one of our favourite TV shows, came out of her mouth as “Bon-ARN-za”. Australian politicians are both a bit pretentious, and a bit shamefaced, about their increasing use of the long “a” sound. They never quite know whether they’re Arthur or Martha, so to speak, on this question. You frequently hear them talk of demand rhymes with stand in one sentence and demand rhymes with armed in the next.

Even a politician as thoroughly unpretentious and comprehensively Australian as John Howard was prone to this. Labor politicians determined to be well-spoken are even worse. I don’t know if the ABC has a ruling on this for its presenters. I’ve heard them swing both ways, though pretentiousness seems to be on the rise. This folly of faux poshness deserves a kick in the pants (rhymes with ants).