A new theory from the Victoria University in Melbourne claims that the Australian accent is not as previously thought of being the product of different accents, but rather is actually the result of generations of Australians heavily drinking and the dialect actually being affected as a result.
“Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns,” says public speaking and communication lecturer Dean Frenkel.
Frenkel says “Aussie-speak developed in the early days of colonial settlement from a cocktail of English, Irish, Aboriginal and German – before another mystery influence was slipped into the mix.”
He continued:
“The average Australian speaks to just two thirds capacity – with one third of our throat muscles always sedentary as if lying on the couch; and that’s just concerning articulation. Missing consonants can include missing ‘t’s (impordant), ‘l’s (Austraya) and ‘s’s (yesh), while many of our vowels are lazily transformed into other vowels, especially ‘a’s to ‘e’s (stending) and ‘i’s (New South Wyles), and ‘i’s to ‘oi’s (noight).”
Winston Churchill once famously called the Australian accent “the most brutal maltreatment which has ever been inflicted upon the mother tongue of the great English speaking nations.”