Your origin in the Anglosphere may well dictate how you pronounce this blog title, in time-honoured Henry Higgins fashion.
On my first visit to England, the proprietor of a bed and breakfast establishment in Lyme Regis asked where I was from, as she couldn’t place my accent. When I said Melbourne she answered: ‘Ah, I have friends in Auckland.’ I explained how that city belonged to a separate country, across a sea more than ten times the distance of the English Channel. She replied: ‘Oh, it’s much the same thing.’ I pointed out that it took three hours by air to travel to Auckland from my home airport. But she didn’t get it. I could have pressed my advantage. Had I wished to be a memorably rude guest, I might have asked my ignorant host if she’d ever visited Moscow, which is closer to London than Melbourne is to Auckland. Athens isn’t as far from London as that distance, and nor is Istanbul. Last time I checked, not one of these cities belonged to Great Britain; so, yes, it made a difference. I thought so then. Now I’m not so sure.
On reflection, I think my host might have had culturally valid reasons for her misapprehension. Part of that woman’s ignorance stemmed from a Euro-centric mentality, a syndrome not helped by Gerardus Mercator’s famous Mercator projection of 1569. A revolutionary way of representing the Earth on a flat plane, and a handy invention for navigators, it did distort the relative size of continents, giving Europe a geographic bulk and a global centrality that later projections revealed as inaccurate. So it’s hardly surprising for someone educated in a country that was once a naval superpower to have a Euro-centric view of the world, e.g. ‘Americans and Canadians are interchangeable’, and ‘People across Australasia are much of a muchness’.
This cultural and linguistic myopia is reinforced by our region’s language differences; or more accurately, lack thereof. The entirety of Europe could fit snugly within Australia’s landmass, with Great Britain and Northern Ireland taking up less than half the Northern Territory. There are hundreds of indigenous languages spoken in that area but only one variety of English. Compare this with the minute variations of English even in a single county, such as Yorkshire. And compare it to the near uniformity of English spoken the length and breadth of the world’s sixth largest nation and its trans-Tasman neighbour. So perhaps from the vantage point of my host’s green and pleasant land, the view of Australia and New Zealand did look linguistically homogeneous. And not much has changed.
Western Australia is bigger than the combined land mass of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Queensland is larger than the entire Iberian Peninsula or the combined countries of former Yugoslavia. But apart from varieties of accent, Australians all speak the same English. Yes, there are a few regional variations. Queenslanders carry ports while the rest of us carry suitcases. New South Wales beer drinkers order a middy instead of a pot. It’s hardly Scots versus East Anglian in the dialect stakes. Indigenous languages and non-English tongues aside, our differences are cultural and social rather than linguistic. We pronounce words with a broader or softer emphasis, depending on our region, our schooling and our upbringing. Some of us sound ‘broad’ like Dave Hughes, Paul Hogan or Julia Gillard. Others sound more ‘cultivated,’ like Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries or Cate Blanchett. The majority are somewhere in the middle. A few of us may say ‘brahnch’ and ‘dahnce’ but nobody says ‘grahnd piahno’. There is an urban myth that people from Adelaide and Melbourne pronounce ‘school’ as ‘skool’ while people from elsewhere say ‘skirl’ but I’ve heard far too many exceptions to take that one seriously. I know many people who say ‘Malbourne’ and who pronounce ‘celery’ as ‘salary’ but an equal number who don’t. A former girlfriend used to tease me for my pronunciation of salt as ‘sawlt’ instead of her ‘solt’. But this hardly counts as major linguistic variation. So what if a few South Australians say ‘miwk’ instead of ‘milk’ and people from Balmain say ‘cassle’ while their compatriots from Mosman say ‘cahstle’. There are greater pronunciation differences up and down the north bank of the Thames than all the differences between speakers in Perth, Hobart and Brisbane, which are geographically as disparate as Portugal, Crete and Warsaw.
Across the Tasman Sea, the same debate goes on. Linguists have yet to find significant regional variation in English, but New Zealanders insist that the differences are there, and not just between North and South Island. The kiwis have a handful of regional terms, as in Australia, but it’s mostly their accent that distinguishes New Zealanders from other English speakers. And like their counterparts across the western water, there are degrees of difference between ‘broad’ and ‘cultivated’ (as in Australia, the latter often sound more English than the English). In like manner, setting aside the fact of indigenous languages and languages other than English, there isn’t much variation, attributable to many communities settling at a similar time period instead of hundreds of years of overlapping overlords as in Britain. There are minor regional variations in vocabulary from British, American and Australian English (e.g. ‘dairy’ for a milk bar, ‘bach’ for a shack, ‘jandals’ for thongs) and Māori people use a distinctive accent for some words in common speech. Nevertheless, to many other English speaking people around the world, voices from Australasia are indistinguishable. Sam Neill, Peter Jackson and Neil Finn are proud New Zealanders but to British or American ears they may well sound Australian. We all know who Flight of the Conchords are and why their jokes work. But it’s not language so much as a distinctive attitude and dryness of delivery that brings out the humour.
So perhaps my ignorant host from Dorset wasn’t entirely off the mark. Sure, she had her facts wrong but linguistically speaking, we are much the same thing. It’s jealousy of course. Our weather is better, like our wines and our beer and our food. Also we’re better looking, more fun and vastly more talented than those folk from the old world. No worries, bro.
Word Worry Will 