Listen up! The Aussie accent is on the move

Let a clarion call go out to the Bernards and Gerards of Australia, to mobilise an underground movement and slowly push back against the Americanisation of Australia. Picture: iStock

I suppose it comes with longevity: the tendency to reflect upon the way we live today with how we lived half a century (and more) ago. Not so much in a judgmental way – there’s a lot about the way things were that needed to change – but with a sense of wonder. How, and when, did we shift from there to here?

This realisation that our culture and even our language have shifted can come out of nowhere. Like suddenly realising there have been changes to the Australian accent. To my ear, the pronunciation of Melbourne has changed, and quite recently too. When I was a kid it was pronounced Mel-bun, whereas today it seems to have changed to Mal-bun. Sydney has collapsed to Sinny, a shift that is being led, I think, by the locals. Sydney may not have lost its chutzpah during the pandemic but it has lost its “d”.

Even the pronunciation of the acronym ABC by reporters seems to be flattening to Ay Bay Say. Is the Australian accent on the move? And if so, is it down to the influence of immigrants, the advent of social media – or our long embrace of American culture?

I distinctly recall the anxiety I experienced as a young teenager when using the word guys instead of blokes: it felt like I was betraying my Australianness. It was the same with drinking coffee rather than tea; it seemed culturally disloyal. Then again, I couldn’t wait to get my first pair of Levi’s jeans in 1971. Half a century on, the Americanisation of Australia continues. Black Friday sales, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, even the Super Bowl have muscled their way into our culture.

And I am being personally targeted by the Americans: the pronunciation of Bernard is shifting from two clipped syllables, with the emphasis on the first, to the oh-so-American Ber-Nard. These days I must go through a ritual: first I say my name is Bernard; in the face of confusion, I say it again as Ber-Nard.

I suspect that our Gerard population is suffering in a similar fashion. So let a clarion call go out to the Bernards and Gerards of Australia, to mobilise an underground movement and slowly push back against the Americanisation of Australia. (Do you think the CIA’s media-scanning algorithms will discern this column as insurrection chatter? If so, let me confuse them with a counter view: Australia’s giggly “girt by sea” pales in comparison with America’s ennobling “land of the free, home of the brave”. Oh, how I admire those words.)

But it’s not just the occasional pronunciation that signals US infiltration; it’s in our spelling, too. There is a “u” in colour, there is no “z” in specialisation. However, our pronunciation of the letter z is teetering towards zee. Let’s face it, zed is dead.

Mum has somehow morphed into mamma (in some quarters) but dad is stoically refusing to shift. The American “y’all” is a step too far for most Australians, but then again I always felt that our equally distinctive “youse” was a close linguistic cousin. Let y’all and youse live peaceably but separately in our time.

I fear that sometime in the 2020s, perhaps with the birth of AUKUS and the rotation of more American troops in the Top End, we will see a fuller integration of American and Australian culture. And to some extent this is inevitable. For the better part of 200 years Australia projected British language, pronunciation and culture. That is now receding. America is advancing and will advance further. Despite the best efforts of the not-so-secret Bernard & Gerard Coalition, our future for good or ill is tied to our friends across the Pacific.