Demographer Bernard Salt once wrote a column for the magazine section of The Weekend Australian in which he lamented that the Australian language is being swamped by Americanisms.
So, is the Australian language under threat?
Salt claimed that he noticed changes to the Australian accent: “To my ear, the pronunciation of Melbourne has changed, and quite recently too. When I was a kid it was pronounced Mel-bun, whereas today to Mal-bun. Sydney has collapsed to Sinny, a shift that is being led, I think by the locals.”
Both his observations are correct, but neither is new.
They have both been around for a very long time.
For twenty years (at least) people have been pointing out to me that Melburnians reverse “EL” and “AL” sounds.
Clive Robertson complained to me many years ago that Melburnians collect CD el-bums not al-bums and that if “Ellen” married “Allan” in Melbourne everyone would be confused as to how to pronounce the couple’s names.
As for Sinny—that was coined by Alistair Morrison (under his pen name of “Professor Afferbeck Lauder) back in 1965 for his book on Strine.
These things are not new and are well established parts of the Australian language.
He also complained about the Americanised pronunciation of his own name from Bern-udd to Bern-ARD.
Well, he may be right about that, and he has my sympathy.
But Australians still spell “colour” with a “U” and (in general) our language is not being swamped by Americanisms.
The truth is that American English is having an impact on every dialect of English around the world.
As long ago as 1922 the great Henry Fowler complained about the American influence on English.
But we not being swamped.
Australians pick and choose which American expressions will be useful to them and discard the rest.
Despite the influence of American media, we still have chemist shops not drug stores, and we still fill our cars with petrol not gas.
Salt goes on to worry that “with the birth of AUKUS and the rotation of more American troops in the Top End, we will see a fuller integration of American and Australian culture.”
His fears are unnecessary.
In the 1960s huge numbers of American troops spent time in Sydney during the Vietnam war (on “R and R”— “rest and recreation”) and the result was the export of Australian expressions to American instead of the other way around.
Bernard Salt simply does understand either the history or the strength of the Australian language.
He writes: “For the better part of 200 years Australia projected British language, pronunciation and culture.”
This is simply untrue.
As Bruce Moore has shown in his book Speaking Our Language, and as I explain at length in my book The Story of Australian English our distinctive language came into existence surprisingly early.
There is evidence that by the 18320s (only 50 years after the founding of the colony) the Australian language had its own distinctive accent and vocabulary.
So, stop worrying Bernard—Aussie English is doing well, and is not being swamped by anyone!
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