The Australian Accent.

My cousin sister's husband is an aussie. Since I have been staying with them for the past one and a half week, it isnt abnormal that we argue about how we pronounce things. Honestly, eventhough me and my sis were brought up in an english speaking family, using english as our day to day conversation, when it comes in clashing with the Australian accent, it really does clash hard.

As a Malaysian, we tend to have different ways of pronouncing things. One example, Gippsland. How we pronounce it : JIPP-SS-LEND. How they pronounce it : GIPP-SS-LAND. They tend to exaggerate on how they pronounce certain alphabets too. The word example : Hello. How we pronounce it : HEH-LLO. How they pronounce it : HEH-LOW. The 'O' sound here is exaggerated in a way, where they would add an extra O somewhere behind the existing O. Word : Zoology. Us : ZOO-LO-GI. Them : ZOO-O-LO-GI. YOU SEE! Got me really confused when they were asking me what I was intending to study at Monash. I though I was hearing it wrongly, thinking that they were saying the word BIOLOGY or something else with the O-logy in it. It wasn't until I was enrolling for my subjects and this counsellor kept going on and on mentioning ZOO-O-LO-GI.

This would be the usual way when they meet someone, 'Hello there! How are you doing today?' It makes you look like a rude bastard if you had not replied to that sentence. I guess a mere, 'Good, thank you' would be enough? Maybe I would need to brush up how to respond to that. But yes, this happens everywhere, at the restaurant, at the supermarket, where ever that requires customer services.

Not to forget the way that they mention the time. I have yet to fully understand what they meant when they mention the time. They mention them in words, where we lazy people would only mention the time immediately. eg, A quarter to one. I honestly thought it meant 1.15 because I caught the word 'quarter' and the word 'one', completely missing out the word on 'to'. I guess I was too used to only mentioning the time straight forward so that it would not confuse others. Since we have the very famous Malaysian Time, I would normally set the time in numbers, knowing that I myself have difficulties understanding worded times, numbered times seems so much more convenient.

Some other examples, other. Us : ut-therr , Them : ut-tha.

Really finding it rather difficult to capture their accent. When I see an asian communicating with good aussie accent, I would be blown away and be amazed by how they manage to capture it.

I'd like to have the aussie accent too! :D