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Mark Webber has not competed in Formula 1 racing for almost ten years, but the memory of his inimitable Aussie accent is still alive among racers and fans. And he is not alone - literally any American or English who has been in close contact with a representative of the Green Continent for some time will sooner or later tell you a story in the style of "do you know how they pronounce this word?"

In fact, Australian English is a unique linguistic phenomenon, one of the most distinctive varieties of the most widely spoken language on our planet. Yes, things are different in Australia. And the words to which we are so accustomed sometimes sound quite unexpectedly different there.

#1

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans "Eeemoo". It's a goddamn EEEM-YOU!!! Drives me bats**t insane every time.

dutchroll0 , Nigel Hoult Report

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Illicit
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I too get upset when others are ignorant of all the mysterious hidden letters in words. I mean, it's obvious that a 3 letter word has two hard vowels... FOR NO REASON! lol

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#2

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Carmel. There's another A there for a reason.

serenitative , Joy Report

#3

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Melbourne.

Americans pronounce it as it's spelt, we pronounce mel-burn.

CoDroStyle , James Bernstein Report

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Tucker Cahooter
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Actually I would say we pronounce it as "mel-bn" totally eliding the final vowels

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The first British colony on the Australian continent, New South Wales, was founded in 1788, and after a little over thirty years, English scientists who came to Australia were forced to admit that a new version of the language had formed on the continent. And the more new settlers from different parts of Britain and Europe crossed the two oceans, the more different this option became.

#4

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans *edit because apparently I need to say ~not all seppos~*

**F*****g "emoo"**. Also; Meer (mirror), squrl (squirrel), w**re movie (instead of horror), Erin when they mean Aaron, creg (craig), gram (Graham), riz-OE-toe (risotto). Nuculer... also I listen to a podcast where the guy says dragon weird, almost like draygon.

OH and when they say iron like eye-ron. And nitch instead of niche. And twot instead of twat.

How are they managing to f**k up "sentient"?

Edit to add CARRRR-mul, o-REG-a-no, and this f*****g video https://youtu.be/sa3Tl3t88Mc where they say wooder instead of water, or even their usual wahhhhderr.

iusedtobefamous1892 , Blondinrikard Fröberg Report

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Jef Bateman
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

American here - I've tried to say "squirrel" like British people and Australians do. It's not easy. There is a squirrel in my neighborhood, so I asked him. I really could not get him to register any sort of preference at all.

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#5

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Aluminium, pecan, almond, fillet, herbs, Melbourne, Cairns

anon , tracy ducasse Report

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Miztre
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

To be fair, some Australians cannot pronounce Cairns. No, it's not Carrns.

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#6

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Of course there’s multiple varying accents in the US, and some of these only occur in a subset:

erb for herb

boo-ee for buoy

yuman for human

aLOOminum for aluminium

flar for flower

J. S. Back for J. S. Bach

billbotbillbot , Wendy Wei Report

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Jef Bateman
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

American here - We actually spell it "aluminum." It's because of the American Chemical Society.

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English writer Anthony Burgess (that very guy who wrote The Clockwork Orange) described mid-twentieth-century Australian English as "a kind of petrified cockney from the Dickensian era." But at the same time, the language was strongly influenced by the languages ​​of Aboriginal Australians, and the influence of American culture in the second half of the century also did its job.

Today, according to linguists, about a third of Australians speak the so-called Broad Australian, nearly half of the population uses General Australian, and about ten percent usually maintain a conversation in Cultivated Australian. Do you want some auditory examples? For the first option just listen to, let's say, Bryan Brown or ex-Premier Minister Julia Gillard. For the second - it's enough to hear how Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe or Hugh Jackman speak. And to get acquainted with Cultivated Australian, simply watch any film with the participation of Geoffrey Rush or listen to a recording of the famous opera singer Joan Sutherland.

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#7

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Innernet

sharabi_bandar , Scott Schiller Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We do tend to elide over the internal 't' in some words. Sometimes, they're pronounced closer to a barely vocalized 'd' than a 't'.

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#8

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Buoy. Americans say "booey". Dumbest thing ever.

UnderstandingRight39 , Matt Hardy Report

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Fat Harry
Community Member
1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

For those Yanks wondering, it's pronounced "boy" outside the US. Incidentally, how would you pronounce buoyant? Boo-eyant? Or boyant?

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#9

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Craig as Creg. As a Craig it kills me

Aussiechimp , Comedy Central Report

Interestingly, the final legitimization of Australian English in the minds of the Aussies themselves appeared relatively recently - in 1981, when the lexicographer Susan Butler published the first edition of the Macquarie Dictionary, which has since gone through seven reprints, and today is generally considered by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on Australian English.

"There are many Englishes in the world: there's English English, or British English, there's American English, South African English, Singaporean English, Philippine English, and so on. Among those Englishes there is Australian English, which didn't really have any proper account, any proper record, of what its characteristics were," Susan Butler said in an interview with Junkee a few years before her retirement in 2017. "In those circumstances, communities can find it a little bit difficult to have a sense of what their English is, and certainly to believe in it - to believe it's a legitimate form of English."

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#10

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Kirsten being pronounced ‘Keerstin’. Ick.

chops_potatoes , Tabercil Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The name is Scandinavian, and that's how they pronounce it. Go argue with them.

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#11

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Toob instead of tube. My kids all pronounce YouToob instead of YouTube …

anon , cottonbro studio Report

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Stevo
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Er... I'm probably proving the point unintentionally, but how do 'tube' and 'toob' sound different? Do they pronounce it 'tyoob' or something?

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#12

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans They say Graham like "gram".

DictionaryStomach , Willis Lam Report

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Libstak
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Who says which? I'm Australian and am confused as to who the OP is versus who "they" are, not at all clear....

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Be that as it may, today Australian English sometimes sounds completely unusual to the American ear, and having heard it somewhere on the streets of Melbourne, some modern Dorothy definitely has the right to say: "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Well, the more interesting it will be to scroll to the very end of this list and maybe add some more fascinating findings about how this or that word we are used to sounds far south of the equator.

#13

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Niche... They say "nitch"

timblom , Karolina Grabowska Report

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Bethany Heller
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm American and even I think that's wrong 😅 everyone says it like that and I hate it

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#14

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Here in the US on a certain quizzing show, the host pronounced Uluru as oo-LOO-roo. Not only that but she was *correcting* a contestant’s pronunciation.

But it’s oo-la-ROO, right?

SaturdayHeartache , Ek2030372672 Report

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Chrissyfox
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My American niece visited me in France (I'm English) and proceeded to correct me on so many pronunciations. I just wanted to strangle her...

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#15

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Erin for Aaron.

anon , Gage Skidmore Report

#16

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Solder = Sarder

bobba84 , cottonbro studio Report

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Ace
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'd spell the American version more like Sodder. Perhaps it varies but I've never heard them pronounce the L.

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#17

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Duty - we have a tendency to pronounce it "jew-ty"

ratdarkness , Liz Lawley Report

#18

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Aussy instead of Auzzy. Even after an Australian has just said the damn word.

And lol at the Americans trying to convince us that they don’t realllly pronounce words different.

loralailoralai , aboodi vesakaran Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Dude, half your vocabulary is words y'all made up. Or you randomly add an 'o' to the end of it, like 'doggo'.

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#19

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans For some reason they say Dachshund as “doxund”. That is in no way close to the German it comes from.

universe93 , Em Hopper Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So you don't pronounce 'Kirsten' the way Scandinavians pronounce it, but insist on linguistic purity when it comes to 'dachshund'? Sorry, mate, but you're just as screwed up as the rest of us English-speakers. Because English isn't a language; it's a dozen languages in a trench coat.

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#20

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Oregano and basil have different stresses to the point that could be something else

Mrbusybaconandeggs , Karolina Grabowska Report

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#21

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Data vs Data as in Day-tah vs Dar-tar

Schedulator , Markus Spiske Report

#22

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Antarctica (they don't pronounce the first t)

Enceladus89 , Pixabay Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes, we do, although a lot of people don't say 'Ant-arc-tic-a' but 'An-tar-tic-a' for some reason.

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#23

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Enquiry. Australians say en-quiry. Americans say ink-wery.

CEOofmyhouse56 , artethgray Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Our spellings are 'inquiry' and inquire' for both formal and informal investigations.

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#24

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Antarctica - “Anardica”

Temperature - “Tempichure”

Van Gogh - “Van Go”

Graham - “Gram”

Craig - “Creg”

Herb - “Erb”

Emu - “Emoo”

Koala - “Koala bear”

Aussies - “Ahssies”

Mirror - “Mir”

Squirrel - “Skwerl”

jcthefluteman , Maddie Franz Report

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Lakota Wolf
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I tried saying all of these words out loud just now, but I'm no longer certain what my natural pronunciations are, or if I'm getting skewed by reading all of these supposedly "incorrect" pronunciations XD I live in Southern California and I *think* I naturally say all of these words just like the quoted pronunciations. I'm no longer certain if these are "correct" pronunciations or if I'm being indirectly made fun of by people who pronounce these words "correctly" XD

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#25

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Caramel/car-mel and aluminium/alu-minum was the removal of a syllable really necessary?

GirtBySteez , Madison Inouye Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The syllable was added...by the English: "The two spellings (aluminum vs. aluminium) can be attributed to the chemist who discovered the metal, Sir Humphry Davy. It was back in 1807 when the English chemist identified the 13th element on the periodic table which he first named aluminum as a nod to alumina which refers to the oxidation of aluminum and has been used since 1790 or so (even before the element was discovered and named). It was not until 1812 when Sir Humphry Davy was encouraged by his fellow chemists to propose a name change for the metallic element to “aluminium”, pronounced as [ al-yuh-min-ee-uhm ]."

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#26

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Harry as Hairy

anon , Dzenina Lukac Report

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Richard Kimmell
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Many of the American pronunciations vary between generations and regions.

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#27

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans The name Megan.

Pronounced Meh-gan everywhere else.

Pronounced Mee-gan in Australia.

needsmorecunts , nicolas genin Report

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Tucker Cahooter
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Can confirm that we do indeed say "Mee-gan". Likewise Tegan pronounced as "Tee-gan"

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#28

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans Solder (EN) != sodder (US)

Soft-Ts (EN) vs hard-Ts (US) - tunes == choons, not toons

The massive over-emphasis on R-sounds and elimination of many L-sounds.

The many, many excuses that pop up if you mention the difference, about "that's how it used to be pronounced/spelled/etc", that are usually folk etymologies or just false.

dezignator , The LEAF Project Report

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#29

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans ‘ Lever’ to sound like ‘leather’, and ‘missile’ to sound like the first syllable in ’mistletoe’.

RobynFitcher , D and T Association Report

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Nikki Sevven
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes, but you don't pronounce 'level' as 'lee-vul', do you? So why would you pronounce 'lever' as 'lee-ver'?

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#30

People Of Australia Share 30 Words And Names They Usually Pronounce Completely Different To Americans How no one is mentioning cement in here is amazing. Americans pronounce it seament as in semen instead of “Ceh-ment”

TyphoidMary234 , Rodolfo Quirós Report

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