ladycascadia

How do I know? Experience, honey. 1979. after dark, dunes at Del Mar beach, Camp Pendleton. You’ll spend DAYS getting the sand out of the most intimate places…trust me on this one! :(

According to linguists, there are three variations on Australian English: Broad, General and Cultivated Australian English. These three main varieties are actually part of a continuum and are based on variations in accent. They often, but not always, reflect the social class and/or educational background of the speaker…just as you would find in any Anglophone speaking country such as the US, Canada, UK, NZ, South Africa.

Ok, ok, so back in the 80’s just like a lot of other people who got into the whole “Crocodile Dundee” craze, I was fascinated by the accent and words in Australian English. So I tried to learn how to speak with an Australian accent. In addition to befriending Australians and New Zealanders (pretty easy if you live in So. California as I did at the time), I went and got some tapes and books on the topic…and watched tons of Australian made movies like My Brilliant Career, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli as well as listened to TV broadcasts from the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) that would sometimes be aired on the local PBS station in Los Angeles.

At any rate, during my “experiment” back in the day, I found out real quick when dealing with real Aussies in America that they don’t necessarily appreciate hearing they way they speak stereotyped. I remember one woman asking me, how would I like it if someone came up to me and automatically spoke in Ebonics solely based on my skin color? A rather good point. I’ve had that happen…and I DON’T like it!

One really should be careful casually doing ANY sort of foreign or US regional accent/dialect that is not their own original accent/dialect, otherwise it might look like you’re making fun of someone and the person could get offended. So, unless it’s for a play or a TV show or you plan to emigrate to Australia and want to try to fit in with the locals, I wouldn’t recommend doing this sort of thing in everyday use especially while on a job.

Years ago, when I worked at a call center, I saw a guy who was bored…so he started doing this really loud and and exaggeratedly false sounding Aussie accent on the phones. He did this the whole morning, and it was just annoying. Even though some folks thought it was funny, I thought it was the most unprofessional thing I’d ever seen…and he was running the real risk of offending a customer and losing business!

So I’d say, if anything, people should work on improving their OWN diction with their own NATURAL voices, and not try to sound like someone else because they think it’s “cool.” It’s not…imitating someone else’s accent/dialect is pretentious at best, and rude at it’s very worst.

Why? Because I am a acoustic folk rock singer/songwriter who is also proactive and won’t let anyone tell me, you can’t…especially the suits controlling the major record labels! Fact: major labels are only interested in unsigned musical acts under age 30…even American Idol cuts you off at 29. So what is someone who is slightly older but still have a fire in the belly supposed to do? Play the coulda, would, shoulda game? Heck,no. You take a page out of Ani DiFrancos book and start your own. It’s called being an entrepreneur…and while I won’t be quitting my day job, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I went for a dream rather than just give up because someone else thinks I should. I figure when you’re pushing 50, you’ve earned the right to “push the envelope”, too!