THE AUSTRALIAN ACCENT.
One of the strongest prejudices that one has to overcome when one visits
Australia is that created by the weird jargon that passes for English in
this country. Created is too mild a term to apply to the process. It
comes as a positive shock, and I recall with actual pain the morning I
awoke as the mailboat lay at Fremantle breakwater, and I heard this
horrible patois filter through my porthole to offend my ear for the
first time.
Strangely enough, English people who have lived in the colonies for any
length of time grow accustomed to the pronunciation of the Australian,
and, worst of all, it insinuates itself into their own language, until
it is really difficult to find a resident of more than ten years'
standing in Australia who does not sing-song like a native.
The Australian accent has frequently been described by travellers, but
none have done justice to its abominations. Many unobservant persons,
shuddering through three or four months' experience, have left
Australia saying that the people of the island continent use the dialect
of the East End of London. This is a gross injustice to poor
Whitechapel. Neither the coster of to-day, nor the old-time Cockney of
the days of Dickens, would be guilty of uttering the uncouth vowel
sounds I have heard habitually used by all classes in Australia. For the
dialect of this country differs from those of other lands in being as
strongly developed among the educated people as among the peasantry.
Were its use restricted to the bullock-driver and the larrikin one could
make excuses; but this is not so. Judges, scientists, University
graduates, and bottle-gatherers use the same universal Australian
esperanto. The doctor, who has attained eminence in Australia, and who,
in point of merit, is probably quite up to the standard of the average
provincial practitioner at Home, will give such words as "light" and
"bright" the same exaggerated vowel sound as the cabman and the
bootblack. The barrister will not say, "May your Honour please," but
"May-ee yer Honour please." The scientist will refer to "Me researches."
There is no such word as "my" in the Australian language. "Me husband,
me yacht, me motor," one hears everywhere. But the most striking
instance of vowel mispronunciation occurs in respect of the diphthong
"ow." A cow is invariably a "keeow," brown is "bree-own," town is
"teeown."
So exaggerated is the Australian's rendering of this sound that they
actually accuse English people of being in error. "Naturally the
difference would strike you," once said a leading Australian journalist
to me, with a superior smile; "you English people always say rahnd the
tahn and talk about milking a brahn cah." I was too used to Australian
self-sufficiency by that time to take offence. The people had ceased to
offend me and commenced to amuse me.
But it is not so much the vagaries of pronunciation that hurt the ear of
the visitor. It is the extraordinary intonation that the Australian
imparts to his phrases. There is no such thing as cultured, reposeful
conversation in this land; everybody sings his remarks as if he were
reciting blank verse after the manner of an imperfect elocutionist. It
would be quite possible to take an ordinary Australian conversation and
immortalise its cadences and diapasons by means of musical notation.
Herein the Australian differs from the American. The accent of the
American, educated and uneducated alike, is abhorrent to the cultured
Englishman or Englishwoman, but it is, at any rate, harmonious. That of
the Australian is full of discords and surprises. His voice rises and
falls with unexpected syncopations, and, even among the few cultured
persons this country possesses, seems to bear in every syllable the sign
of the parvenu. There is a nouveau riche in culture as well as in
material things, and the accent of the cultivated Australian proclaims
to the world that his acquisition of learning belongs to his generation
alone. At Home, we are occasionally forced to encounter individuals
whose sudden access to money is revealed by their tongues, but we are
spared from such unpleasant revelations when we meet the intellectuals.
These are products of generations. In Australia, they are turned out
while you wait, with all the uncouthness of their fathers. Australia
alone of all the countries in the world has lingual hobnails on its
culture.
In the counties of Great Britain and the provinces of continental Europe
the possession of a marked dialect denotes lowly origin. The educated
gentleman of Yorkshire or Sligo is differentiated only by a very slight
and not displeasing accent. In fact, in Great Britain, the dialect is of
some benefit in indicating the origin of the man who uses it. I have
frequently found it of value in engaging servants and in dealing with
the lower classes generally. But in Australia, this abominable
pronunciation pervades the entire continent. The native of Perth and the
native of Townsville use precisely the same phrases pronounced precisely
the same way, gentleman and labourer alike. Possibly this is one of the
results of the extraordinary democracy of this country--a democracy
which makes Jack as good as his master. Perhaps it is a cause rather
than an effect. When Jack finds his master speaking in the same manner
as he does himself, and, making no effort to maintain his position as a
gentleman, he is not so much to be blamed for thinking that he is as
good as his master--and in Australia he probably is.
The Australian's practice of singing his remarks I can only ascribe to
the influence of the Chinese. During my stay in Melbourne, I spent one
evening at supper in a Chinese cook-shop in Little Bourke street, and I
was instantly struck by the resemblance between the intonation of the
phrases passing between the Chinese attendants and that of the
conversation of the cultivated Australians who accompanied me. But, in
addition to this lack of good-breeding and the gross mispronunciation of
common English words, the Australian interlards his conversation with
large quantities of slang, which make him frequently unintelligible to
the visitor. This use of slang is so common that the public memory
forgets that it is slang, and it finds its way into most unexpected
places. Chief Justices on their benches, leading newspapers in their
editorials, statesmen--such as Australia boasts--all disfigure their
utterances by jarring slang terms and phrases, so commonly used as to
pass unnoticed by either their hearers or themselves.
English slang has a foundation of humour. There is a note of whimsical
comedy about the Oxford undergraduate's practice of calling a bag a
bagger, and nobody can repress a smile the first time he hears a coster
call eyes "meat-pies" or trousers "round-the-houses." But there is no
humour in Australian slang. It is drawn from the lowliest sources--the
racecourse, the football match, and the prize-ring. Like most of the
imagery of primitive people, it is largely metaphorical, so involved as
to require an interpreter.
When a man's chances are regarded as hopeless, the invariable Australian
comment is that "he's got Buckley's." After having heard this stupid
expression a dozen times, I became curious, and set out on the task of
tracing the meaning of it. I ascertained that at the beginning of the
nineteenth century three convicts escaped from a party which landed at
Port Phillip. Two were killed and eaten by the blacks, but the third,
one Buckley, escaped death and lived on friendly terms with the
aborigines, to be found alive and well when Melbourne was founded thirty
years later. The remote chance of escaping with his life which Buckley
secured has since been applied to all remote chances. This is typical of
Australian slang, and the visitor who desires to understand fully the
patois encountered in this country needs to employ an interpreter.
In conclusion, it is only necessary to point out that so objectionable
is the Australian accent that theatrical managers resolutely refuse to
employ Australian-born actors or actresses. Though a few of these are
possessed of talent--or what passes for talent in Australia--the
managers prefer to import English artists of inferior merit, solely
because they possess the essential qualifications that Australians
lack--the ability to speak the English language.