1y ago

Does the way you say 'France' rhyme with 'pants' or 'aunts'? How the Australian accent is changing

www.abc.net.au Does the way you say 'France' rhyme with 'pants' or 'aunts'? How the Australian accent is changing

Australian voices really aren't what they used to be. Linguists and ABC presenters weigh in on the changes to Aussie voices and the death of the ABC accent.

49 comments

I think it depends a lot on how you say 'aunts'
- I don't think any Australians pronounce it like "ant".
  
  I do
  
  The correct Australian way to say ‘Aunt’ is how you would refer to Aunty Jack.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aunty_Jack_Show
  Although I am sure that a lot of the right-wing neo-regressive nut jobs that have popped up in Australia over the last few years would love to refer to her as “anti-Jack” because of the transgender nature of the show.
- Yeah we need to resolve that first. Aunts are cool and take you to a theme park on summer break, whereas aunts don't let you sit on the good furniture and the only candy they have are those lozenges with the wrapper that looks like a strawberry
  
  I think we need to address your use of the word candy first. It's lollies m8, fite me
  
  As a General American speaker, all three of those are the same vowel for me, but I don't think that's true in a lot of the world (and also not in at least part of the US).

France rhymes with pants.
- 🎵There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance
  There's a hole in the wall where the men can see it all 🎵

If you say “France” or “dance” in a way that rhymes with “aunts”, you will open yourself up to merciless ribbing, with people affecting a posh English “oh I say old chap” accent every time you’re around. Far better to play up the Aussie drawl (and if in doubt, shorten a few words by replacing the last vowel with “-o”) to leave no doubt that you’re a true-blue dinky-di Aussie whose ancestors were transported for stealing a loaf of bread rather than someone who’d rather be wearing a top hat and sipping a Pimm’s.

If you say aunts the same way so say pants, then it's both.
- As far as I’m aware, that pronunciation of aunts is never used by Australians.
  
  I pronounce it like that

Aunts. We're just a lot more posh over here in Adelaide.
- "Churchy sounding" to the rest of the country.
- You also pronounce the popular plastic building toy as “Laygo” so that nullifies any authority you may claim about correct pronunciation.
  
  Yeah, tbh I was kinda hoping you weren't going to bring that one up.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Across Australia, linguists are revolutionising the understanding of how Aussies' voices differ from one another, fuelling new insights into what was once thought to be a monolithic accent.
In a 2023 research paper, Debbie Loakes and other linguists at the University of Melbourne found the Victorian habit of pronouncing "el" and "al" the same way (eg "celery" becomes "salary") was dying out among young people in the state's north, but persisting in the south.
Dr Loakes says linguists used to think younger Australians were trending away from the broad and cultivated accents toward a more general voice, but that recent work suggests the changes are more complicated.
ABC listeners may be familiar with the archetypal cadence and tone of Australia's national broadcaster, which certainly falls into the cultivated accent camp.
However, listening to archival recordings makes it clear that the "ABC accent" is far milder today than it was just a few decades ago, and many presenters actively reject it.
Despite recognising that people perceive varieties of Australian English differently, linguists have shied away from classifying them as separate accents.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

How you says words ain’t important.
What matters if you says parma and potato cake or if you’re wrong.
- or if you're wrong
  Imagine having this level of self confidence. It's a potato scallop ya ~~nonce~~ eejit
  
  Jesus fuck mate, that’s really uncalled for.
- Parma or parmi is irrelevant because it's a trash food for people with no taste.
  Potato cake sounds more like an alternative name for potato bake than it does for potato scallop.
  
  Ain’t nothing wrong with comfort food.
  Not everything needs to be a bougie deconstructed h2o dish.
  
  Blasphemy.
  
  Maaaate, think about what you're saying before you insult an entire country.
  
  Potato Scallop refers to either a Potato Scallopine or Hassalback Potatoes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaloppine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasselback_potatoes
  It has nothing to with a deep-fried, battered slice of root vegetable, sprinkled with offensive amounts of chicken salt.
  
  Not if you call it “Lightly Panko crumbed oven baked Delatite Chicken Breast with smoked ham, Napoli sauce & Mozzerella cheese with your choice of two sides.”
  Sorry for the quality of the photo, it was taken in a “lightly fried beer and flour battered, thinly sliced potato”

‘Franky’
It’s pronounced ’Franky’.
Isn’t it?

- @weilawei @Zagorath It's frahnts in South Australia. The same vowel sound is used in castle, dance, and graph.
  Also, potato fritters, not cake or scallop.
- Nah it’s a TZ at the end. Like ants.

@Zagorath by the way you say graph, I'll know where you're not from. I love Alan Kohler but every time he says graph, I flinch
- Personally I say graph with [ɑː], but there's something about the way Kohler says it that sounds more palatable than the American /æ/. I'm not really sure what it is.