aussie english — Petes 2c How Can I Change My Accent from American to Aussie

Transcript کامل قسمت

G'day, guys.

How's it going?

Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English.

It is a bit of a cold Tuesday afternoon.

I have just finished doing my tax for 2024, 2025, that financial year.

My accountant is actually a good friend of mine and I was chatting to him and he's like, oh, I want to review, you know, your tax.

So, just...

smash it out, get it done and send it in quick.

And I'm like, mate, the financial year only finished like a week ago, literally.

So, I've spent all day sort of smashing that out, trying to fix that up.

And I have just made myself a nice warm cappuccino coffee, which I have here in front of me.

So, forgive me if you hear me sipping away.

But today I thought I would do something a little different.

I got a very nice email from Nerman from Egypt and he's got an interesting story.

He is working as an English teacher in Vietnam and is trying to change his accent from American English, I believe, to more Australian English.

So, he sent me an email and he was chatting to me about it and I thought, oh, I could make an episode out of this and we could have a chat about what advice I would give you.

Because, as you guys know, I do a lot of private lessons.

I think at the moment I'm up to something like 30 or 40 private lessons a week.

I guess, shameless plug, if you're interested in private lessons, send me a message or an email.

My email is Pete at AussieEnglish.com.au.

You can message me on Facebook and Instagram as well if you want, though, too.

And I can help you out with English, fluency, pronunciation, how to study, all that sort of stuff, give you personalised feedback on your mistakes.

All that sort of jazz.

But anyway, Nerman was sending me this message and he was asking me this question about changing accents and what to do.

And I realised that most, if not all, of my students are in the same boat.

They are trying to achieve the same thing.

They are trying to develop an Australian accent, but they have spent many years learning British English pronunciation or American English pronunciation.

Anyway, thank you for the email, Nerman.

I'm going to read it out.

And then I'll answer it for you guys.

So, Nerman writes, G'day, Pete.

I'm Nerman from Egypt and am an English teacher in Vietnam.

I recently got hooked on Aussie slang and accent, so I've been following you for less than a week now.

So, welcome, Nerman.

I'm glad you're a fan.

I grew up inspired by Harry Potter, so I spoke British English- Okay, there you go.

So, British English, not American English- for most of my school years.

When I moved to China to study my Masters, though, I got surrounded by Americans and so I picked up that accent quickly.

American English is what I've been speaking with since 2019.

Okay.

So, sorry, I spoke too soon.

I spoke too soon.

He's now speaking with American English.

I have a few close Aussie friends, but the thought of learning a new accent didn't cross my mind until the past week, thanks to an Aussie YouTuber who uses slang in her videos, the slang got me hooked.

So, I did some research and found you.

Very thankful to what I've learned from you so far.

My pleasure, mate.

Thank you.

Thank you for the kind words.

I've got a knack for languages and it's usually easy for me to pick up accents without effort, but honestly, Aussie ain't easy, mate.

I am also facing a couple of challenges with people around me.

It is very awkward that my accent has changed suddenly and I feel burdened every time I need to speak, knowing that I'd have to use my target accent because it's the only way to improve.

Let me read that again.

I feel burdened every time I need to speak knowing that I'd have to use my target accent because it's the only way to improve.

Okay, I got it.

So, he's trying to use Aussie English because he's trying to develop that accent and he wants to use it all the time because he wants to improve.

But the people around him now find the change of pronunciation difficult to understand.

Let's continue.

Besides, not all my friends like the Aussie accent and a lot of them laugh and say, get back to your American accent.

Anyhow, cheers for all the useful podcasts and videos, Pete.

My pleasure, mate.

Also, if you got any useful tips on how to overcome this type of transition between old and new accent, especially when people aren't very supportive, I'd appreciate it.

So, yes, this is why I wanted to talk about it with you guys.

So, there's quite a few things we can talk about.

Obviously, we can talk about motivations.

Why are you wanting to do this?

Why is it important to you?

We can talk about your surroundings and is it going to make your life easier?

Is it going to make your life harder?

And we could also talk about, obviously, how to do it.

I guess, starting at the start there with motivations.

Nerman, you've got to decide why you want to do it and why that's important.

And if it is really, really important for you to speak with an Australian accent,

at the end of the day, that is what matters.

That's what matters.

It's really about you.

You know, it's about you.

What are your desires?

What are your goals?

What are your dreams?

What do you want to do?

Do you want to learn an Aussie accent?

And if yes, then do it.

You know, screw everyone else.

So, that would be the first sort of piece of advice I would say, you know, go with your heart.

If this is what you want to do, if you feel like doing it, if you're motivated to do it, if you enjoy doing it, then do it, mate.

Do it.

The second thing, though,

If we talk about sort of the ramifications, what does it mean for you in terms of your surrounding environment?

Because you also have to kind of take that into account.

Is it going to make working more difficult?

Are you going to have, you know, friends, family, students?

mocking you, teasing you, confused by you suddenly changing your pronunciation and how is this going to affect your life?

So, if it's going to make your work harder, if it's going to impede your life, if you aren't getting very supportive messages from around other people and that is affecting you emotionally, you know, you're feeling depressed about it, then you kind of have to weigh that up at the end of the day and decide, am I going to do this because I want to do it and screw everyone else?

Or are you going to feel like, well, you know, maybe now's not the time because the people around me aren't being supportive and potentially it's impacting the way that I work.

You know, you're working as an English teacher.

Do Vietnamese English learners want to learn Australian pronunciation?

You know, do they want to learn British pronunciation or American pronunciation?

So, you would have to factor those things in, obviously, too.

And, you know, you have to-

You have to decide at the end of the day if perhaps even though you're very, very, very motivated to do this at the moment, maybe it's not the best decision if it's going to impact you mentally and you're going to feel depressed as a result.

Okay.

So, I can't really tell you what to do.

You have to kind of weigh these things up and decide for yourself.

I would encourage you, you know-

At the end of the day, I would say follow your heart, do what you want to do.

If you're passionate about it, you know, then you would hope that the people around you would support you with something like this, where obviously it's not harming anyone else.

Right.

But only you can decide this at the end of the day.

Now, let's talk about how I would go about doing this.

So, if I was chatting with someone who- I guess- What were you saying?

You were saying you speak with American English more recently.

American English is what I've been speaking with since 2019.

Okay.

So, more recently, you've adjusted to an American accent.

This has its pros and cons.

You know, switching from British English to Australian English is probably easier because-

You really only have to change your pronunciation of a couple of vowels a little bit and do things like use the T-flap, D-flap for words like water instead of saying water.

Adding the a sound at the end of a word that has a schwa at the end of it, if it's at the end of a sentence.

So, if I just said the word water or water, I would say water.

if it was by itself, whereas if it's in a sentence, I would say water using the schwa.

Brits would always just say water and they would say the T, they wouldn't use the TD flap.

So, it's probably easier going from British English to Australian English, but you've already learnt British English, so maybe it's not going to be that hard.

American English, there's quite a few different vowel sounds.

But you also have the TD flap.

So, if you've mastered the TD flap in American English, you can obviously just switch that into Australian English.

So, an American would say water and an Australian would say water.

The thing that will be difficult to undo coming from American English to

Australian English is the fact that American English is rhotic, meaning that you always pronounce the R sound in spelling.

So, no matter where an R falls in a word, you will pronounce the R and it colours a lot of their vowels.

So, again, if we take the word water, you will hear it at the end there in that American accent, water.

So, they're saying it with that schwa sound, water.

Whereas an Australian would never say the R at the end of the word water if you were just saying the word by itself.

Australian English is non-rhotic.

So, we only pronounce the R in English if a vowel sound comes after it.

So, if I said, water always makes me thirsty.

I don't know.

You know, I'm making up a sentence.

Water- Now I'm using an American accent.

Water is really nice.

Water is.

Water opens.

Water rollways.

Water route there.

Anytime there is a vowel sound that starts the next word after the word water, because water ends with an R, I will link those vowels at the end of water.

and whatever the next vowel sound is, I will link it with the R. Water is, water always, water route.

Okay.

So, that is probably the trickiest part of changing from American English to Australian English in terms of pronunciation.

You have to kind of only use the R sound in certain situations.

And the other thing is that we don't colour the vowel sounds with that R. So, when you hear water riz, like if I link it together, water riz, the R sound isn't colouring that er schwa sound at the end of the word water.

Okay.

You're not going to hear water is, right?

The R there is colouring that vowel, er, it's saying er, so the R's there.

In Australian English, you will hear the R sort of get inserted in front of the next word.

Water is.

See, it just pops in right at the end there.

Water is, er is, instead of er is.

Okay.

So, that is tricky and it takes a lot of practice.

Okay.

The main things are going to be nailing the vowels, and in particular, the diphthongs.

There will be the odd monothongs, so those single vowels like A, E, I, those types of vowels that are slightly different from American English or maybe used in different situations.

But the really hard ones are going to be the diphthongs, and in particular, it's going to be the O vowel sound like an Australian.

The good news is if you can master this, if you can master the O sound,

And if you can master non-roticity and using that R at the ends of words or between syllables to link instead of just always pronouncing it like American English, this will make you sound insanely Australian very quickly.

Those are two things.

Like, besides trying to nail most of the other vowels, vowel sounds, the O diphthong vowel sound in Australian English and roticity or non-roticity rather,

when to say the R, when not to say the R, nailing that, the linking R and the intrusive R, nailing those when speaking will make you sound insanely Australian.

Okay.

But they're probably the most difficult things to kind of learn, which is why very few Americans do a really good job at an Australian accent when you watch movies and everything.

They normally don't nail those things.

And if you want a really, really good person that's an American,

to check out who does a flawless Australian accent.

Absolutely flawless.

Absolutely flawless.

It was- Let's look it up.

Apple Cider Vinegar is the TV show.

Apple Cider Vinegar.

A lot of you guys have probably seen this.

It was a Netflix TV show.

Just look it up and try and find this actress's name.

TV show.

It was about a con artist in Australia who pretended to be dying of brain cancer, I think, and she used it to sell lots of books and programs and stuff.

So, Belle Gibson was the woman who the show is about, but the actress is Caitlin-

Diva or Deva.

So, she is- She does the best Australian accent I have ever heard an American do.

And I did not know that she was American until someone told me, and I heard her with an American accent.

She popped up in The Last of Us season two.

She is- I think is it Abby in The Last of Us season two, the bad chick.

She was that actress.

That's the actress that plays Abby, I think, in The Last of Us 2, and she has an American accent in that.

And when I was watching it, I was just like, what?

I thought she was Australian.

So, yes, she's phenomenal.

She's the only American I've ever heard nail an Aussie accent.

So, back to it.

Okay.

Now, the practicality of how to do this.

Really, it comes down to a lot of listen and repeat exercises.

If, you know, I'll give some shameless plugs.

What I would suggest, if you have the resources to do so and the time and the energy, I would obviously purchase my Australian pronunciation course.

You guys can go check that out at AussieEnglish.com.au forward slash APC100.

Use that APC100 URL to get a discount.

In that course, I go through every single vowel sound and consonant sound.

I teach you how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet to work on it on your own, you know, to be able to study alone.

And I also give you more advanced lessons, 25 of them showing you linking connected speech, consonant clusters, the other

more advanced sounds in Australian English, like the dark L, the syllabic L, the syllabic N, all these very advanced sounds.

So, I would get that as a resource because I have everything in one place that you can use to study all the different sounds of Australian English.

I would then-

work with ChatGPT and I would put in your native language and ask, what are the most difficult sounds?

So, I assume if you're from Egypt, your native language is Arabic.

What are the most difficult sounds for me as an Arabic speaker to try and learn in Australian English pronunciation?

I would input the different phonetic symbols, the IPA symbols for the Australian phonemes, the Australian English phonemes, the sounds of Australian English, the vowels and the consonants.

And I would ask ChatGPT or whatever AI you're using to summarise which of these sounds in Australian English are the most difficult ones for Egyptian Arabic speakers, so that you would get an idea of what you should be focusing on as an Arabic speaker.

Right.

So, it'll point you to what lessons inside my Australian pronunciation course you should then be focusing on.

Now, besides that,

I would then be getting lessons with someone who is a native speaker of English and has the native accent and the ear.

They can hear your pronunciation and they obviously are, say, an English pronunciation teacher like myself.

So, I would hire me.

I would get lessons with me to review your pronunciation and pick out the sounds that you really need to work on.

And this is what I do with most of my students at the moment.

I've got a whole bunch of students that I work on pronunciation with and typically

What I do is I'll have a lesson with them, especially if I'm just meeting them.

I get to know them, find out what their issues are.

And then I have them read a text and I pinpoint the specific errors or issues or pronunciation problems that they have that they would like to work on.

And then I give them targeted exercises based on those specific issues.

And I customise these to each student and we work on WhatsApp.

I usually- For instance, if you're working on the Australian O sound,

I would break down the two different vowel sounds in it, uh and oo, how it changes, what the tongue position is.

I would send you a video of my mouth making this sound, and then I usually- And this is what I would suggest you do, whether you get lessons with me, someone else, or just do it by yourself.

Start with practising the sound by itself in the mirror.

Once you know what your mouth needs to be doing, keep an eye on it, try and get your ear in, try and hear it, try and nail that sound.

I would then find a list of common words that have that sound in them.

And again,

If you have my course or not, use AI and ask it to create a list of words that have that specific phoneme, that specific sound that is in Australian English.

So, for instance, I would say something like, ChatGPT, give me a list of the 100 most common words with the vowel sound O, and I would use the IPA symbols to show what you mean, in Australian English, the Australian English O vowel sound, and it'll give you a list of like

know, go, throw, you know, foe, all of these words.

I would then practice those words, that word list, saying them out loud, going through that list.

And it's especially important to go through common words because these are the ones, obviously, that are common that you will be using the majority of the time.

So, it's important to practice those.

You know, if you get 100 common words that have that O vowel sound in them,

They will probably be 99% of the words that you will ever say that will have O in those words.

Okay.

That's why it's important.

Then I would ask Chat Chippy Tea to create, say, 50 concise sentences, short sentences with that vowel sound in the words in the sentence.

So, you might end up with

Tomorrow, I'm going to go to the shops.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go to the shops.

So, then you can practice that vowel sound in lots of different positions.

The reason being- The reason why this is important is because you end up with different sounds before and after that same vowel sound.

So, instead of just practicing O-O-O-O by itself,

Now you'll have it within different words, you know, go, throw, tomorrow with sounds around it.

And you will also have it, you know, between different words in sentences.

I'm going to open something tomorrow, you know, like you get to practice it with all these other phonemes and sounds around it.

And then hopefully get to the point where it feels natural and it's easy for you to use it naturally when speaking English.

Right.

So, that's kind of the process I would go through.

So, usually what I do with my students is I teach them the sound, I show them how to do it.

If they have the Australian Pronunciation Course, I will send them there to do some of those in detail exercises.

If they don't or if they want more, I usually work on WhatsApp with them and I give them a video of my face showing them how to do it all.

I then go through simple word lists and then we go through some sentences and we work on those things, listen and repeat type exercises.

And then obviously in the lessons we go through those in depth and I can give personalised feedback.

But that would be the process.

That would be the process.

So, to sort of summarise, you've got to work out what your motivations are.

Why are you doing it?

Is it really that important?

Is it going to make a big difference to your life?

Is it something you're passionate about?

Is it something you want to do?

Obviously, then the second step is how is it going to impact your life?

Is it going to make your life more difficult in the short term?

You know, if you're planning to come to Australia,

and you live in Vietnam at the moment and you're teaching English and they want to hear British or American English, perhaps it's better to just stick with that for now.

But then in the future, if and when you come to Australia, you can then switch to practising Australian English like crazy.

But perhaps you're like, you know what?

No, I want to practise it right now because I'm planning to go to Australia and I want to hit the ground running.

I want to arrive in Australia and be able to already speak with an Aussie accent.

You know, then you've got to decide.

You've got to decide what you want to do.

And then the process of doing it, it is lots and lots of listen and repeat type exercises, whether it's with a teacher, whether it is using something like AI, whether it is with friends who have that accent, whether you find a model online who is, say, an actor, you know, Chris Hemsworth or something that you think, I want to sound like him.

He has an Aussie accent.

I'm going to watch interviews.

I'm going to watch movies where he speaks with it.

And I'm going to do lots of shadowing exercises.

And it's being aware of what your problems will be as a result of your native language.

What are the sounds that you're going to have difficulty with in Australian English?

And focusing on those most difficult ones first.

And then it's just rinse and repeat.

It's just keep doing the same thing.

And it's probably going to take months of practice, you know, and really kind of smoothing the edges.

You'll make a big difference at the start.

You'll improve rapidly.

But then there'll be small things that sort of still stick out.

And that is where it's probably very important to have a native speaker with that accent who teaches pronunciation, again, shamelessly, like myself, to give you directed feedback on what you need to work on, you know, what you've achieved already.

But then here are still some of the issues that you need to work on.

So, yeah, hopefully, Nerman, that's helped.

And I hope it's helped anyone else who is in the same boat as Nerman and thinking about trying to develop their own Australian English accent.

Again, you just have to decide what you guys want to do.

There's nothing wrong with having your own pronunciation, having an international type English accent, having an American one, having a British one, having an Aussie one.

It's a very personal thing.

And you've got to decide for yourself what you guys want to achieve at the end of the day.

Okay.

I should say like a little bonus note here.

A big thing to sounding more Australian isn't the pronunciation.

It's using the types of phrases.

It's using the words.

It's using the slang.

It's using the idioms that Australians use.

So, that is sort of like the next layer on this layer cake of sounding Australian.

Pronunciation is one thing, but you could have an Australian accent and sound very un-Australian.

You could sound very foreign, ironically.

If you didn't really use Australianisms, you didn't use the kinds of phrases that Australians used, you didn't use the slang, you didn't say things like g'day or mate or cheers or knack for, you know, all of all of these sorts of phrases.

So, and on the other side of the coin, even if you had a foreign accent, if you start using those types of phrases, you will begin to sound very much more Australian.

And I was saying this to one of my students recently, who I think, ironically, was Egyptian and an Arabic speaker.

He's very quick.

He's very sharp.

He's very smart.

And he learns super, super, super quickly.

So, Ahmed, if you're listening to this, you know, keep going, mate.

But he- I've noticed when I chat to him, the more we have lessons, the more I notice he throws in Australianisms, Australian slang, our words, our vocab, the phrases we use.

And I'm just always astonished at how quickly he's picked that up or how hard he's working.

He's obviously written these down.

He sees them in places.

He takes note and then he tries to use them himself when speaking.

And even with a foreign accent, he sounds so Aussie by doing that.

So, that's the other thing.

Perhaps you don't give a shit about your accent.

You're like, I'm happy with it.

I can communicate.

People understand me.

But I still want to sound more Australian.

What you can do is work on just using more phrases like Aussies do, saying things like, G'day mate, how's it going?

Again, you don't have to say it.

You could say, good day mate, how's it going?

And again, that would sound more Australian to me than, hello, how are you?

You know, the same with things like, cheers, thanks for asking.

You know, those sorts of phrases, if you can slip them in here and there, saying Aussie instead of Australian.

Calling someone a dag, you know, someone silly.

Instead of an idiot, you might say something a little nicer that's Aussie.

You're a dag, mate.

You're a bit of a dag.

Using those sorts of things will instantly make you sound Australian.

And it is irrespective of accent.

Okay.

So, that's another thing.

And perhaps, Nerman, this is something you can do whilst you're overseas if you're planning on coming to Australia.

You can work a lot on just learning Australianisms and vocab and everything.

The issue will be that if you use them on Americans, Brits or Vietnamese people while in Vietnam, they will probably be confused because Aussies typically are the ones who are going to understand it.

Anyway.

So, yeah, hopefully that's helped.

Hopefully it's given you something to think about.

And yeah, I guess, again, shameless plug, if you have-

an interest in developing your own Aussie accent, go check out my Australian pronunciation course at AussieEnglish.com.au forward slash A-P-C-1-0-0 and you'll save 100 bucks off the normal price.

If you want private lessons, if you want Zoom lessons with me where we can work on things like pronunciation, fluency, grammar, speaking confidence, how to study English, what to work on, different resources to use, everything like that, then just shoot me an email at Pete at AussieEnglish.com.au or send me a message on Instagram or Facebook and I'll see if I can fit you in.

But yeah, thank you so much for joining me, guys.

I hope you have an amazing week and I'll chat to you next time.

Tooroo!