Australia accents dating

So how do we sort Australian Accents into these boxes?

A 1997 study in the Australian Journal of Linguistics** offered more precise parameters.

–Words like “face”, and “make” move closer to the diphthong in American/RP “kite” in broad accents.

Broad accents are usually described as more extreme (and associated with more working-class speech), while Cultivated Australian accents are a prestige variety somewhat closer to the British Received Pronunciation (although actual speakers of the latter are in the minority). (Blanchett’s somewhat more “British-Sounding” accent may be a result of her being an actress, but her speech nonetheless resembles this type of elevated Australian speech).

For a frame or reference, these corresponding celebrities might help: 1.) Broad: the late Steve Irwin. You may disagree with my judgements here, and that’s fine.* Australian English is clearly a continuum, and these three categories are rough markers on that continuum.

In this way, Australia exhibits a paradox similar to another of the commonwealth’s largest nations, Canada.

Both countries have populations distributed over vast geographical distances, yet have startlingly few regional dialects. *I’m mostly basing this on the degree/frequency to which each speaker retracts and raises the first vowel in words like “price,” “ride,” etc.