Tomayto, tomahto, let's call it all off

What sort of accent does the US-raised Premier of NSW really have, does it change with the audience, and does she adapt it deliberately?

IF the polls are right, one of the most engrossing debates around the NSW parliamentary press gallery will become irrelevant tomorrow night: what sort of accent does the US-raised Premier really have, does it change with the audience, and does she adapt it deliberately?

It depends on who's listening.

Kristina Keneally's father says there's no doubt it changes.

"Well, yeah, I think there's a large change," John Kerscher told The Australian while on his daughter's campaign bus this week.

"When she goes home (to the US), her grandparents, her friends, her aunts and uncles, they all remark about her accent."

But the view among Australian-based speech experts is quite the opposite, saying a decade after taking out Australian citizenship, KK's accent shows you can take the girl out of Ohio, but you can't take Ohio out of the girl.

Trained observers say that after an initial effort to Australianise her accent when she took the top job in 2009, she gave up trying.

It appears Ms Keneally's minders came to the same conclusion as University of New England speech expert Jeff Siegel, who told The Australian American accents were among the most difficult to convert to Australian.

Ms Keneally conceded to The Australian she did employ a professional speech coach early on. "When I first got into parliament, certain words were not being understood," . she said.

She admits growing up she said "tomayto" and now says "tomahto". Whether consciously or not, she adapts her accent depending on the setting and audience. The Australian sent two audio clips to one of the nation's most prestigious speech experts, Isobel Kirk.

The first was of Ms Keneally being interviewed on Sky News's Australian Agenda program, and the second was a TV ad in which she promises, among other things, to cap public transport fares.

Ms Kirk said that in the Australian Agenda interview, Ms Keneally was almost unadulterated girl-next-door midwest American.

But in the ad, certain words were distinctly Australianised: "stop" rather than "stahwrp"; "fares" rather than "fayers"; "dollars" rather than "dahlurs".

A conspiracy theorist might say Ms Keneally deliberately Australianised her accent for the television commercial, but Ms Kirk believes it is more likely to be the circumstances.

"In the Australian Agenda interview . . . she's comfortable, so she's relaxed back into the original accent," Ms Kirk said. In the rather abrasive television commercial, by contrast, "her body's tightened up . . . it's less mellow".