Little-known but seemingly common features

[anteallach]

Australian English has frication of /t/ almost to [ʃ]. I can hear both phenomena in my speech.)

Can you post audio of this? I can't quite imagine this as belonging to a plausible variety of English

I imagine the sound is fairly similar to the one in Scouse, some examples of which can be heard on this recording.

I have something like this too, but it's not as pervasive as in Liverpool. I think the fricative allophone is commonest in intervocalic position after a stressed short vowel, and it's apical, slightly postalveolar and essentially non-sibilant. (It definitely does not merge with either /s/ or /ʃ/, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't do so in Liverpool either.) I think the affricate is most likely before a high vowel or /w/ (/tj/ having gone further and having been assibilated, as probably for most BrE speakers these days).

[bradrn]

Australian English has frication of /t/ almost to [ʃ]. I can hear both phenomena in my speech.)

Can you post audio of this? I can't quite imagine this as belonging to a plausible variety of English

I tried, but it seems to go away when I try to make a recording. As I said, it’s in free variation with other phones, and the fricated allophone is definitely less common; I tend to prefer sounds like [ɾ] in a more formal context such as recording. That said, I’ll post a recording if I manage to get one.

I imagine the sound is fairly similar to the one in Scouse, some examples of which can be heard on this recording.

Yeah, that sounds about right. On the other hand, that paper I linked earlier specifically mentioned Liverpool dialect as one with a different type of /t/-frication to AuE.

By the way, I poked around that site a bit and found that https://www.dialectsarchive.com/australia-36 sounds practically accentless to me, so that might conceivably be helpful as a reference.

[Travis B.]

I tried, but it seems to go away when I try to make a recording. As I said, it’s in free variation with other phones, and the fricated allophone is definitely less common; I tend to prefer sounds like [ɾ] in a more formal context such as recording. That said, I’ll post a recording if I manage to get one.

I have often had that problem when I've tried to make recordings of myself as well.

[axolotl]

When I moved to Utah in 2019, I quickly noticed that people here seem to say "to stay or to go" rather than "for here or to go" when ordering food at restaurants.

I seem to be the only person who ever notices this.

[Pabappa]

maybe if you do a voice recording where youre imitating someone else? i noticed only just recently that speech features I'd thought were seared into my motor memory go away when I do a voice recording where Im not using my natural speaking voice, even when Im not consciously trying to change those specific things. in particular ... when Im speaking normally, i aspirate /p b/ so much that it interferes with the audio quality, but last night i did a recording, even though it was in a deliberately silly voice, where i didnt do that, and that was entirely subconscious.

[Znex]

Australian English has frication of /t/ almost to [ʃ].

I've never heard this. It's weird because in my experience most Australians voice /t/ in these contexts, while the fricative realization is voiceless.

For me, the realisation of /t/ varies between flapped [ɾ], unreleased [t̚], affricated [tˢ~ts~ᵗs] and fricated [s̻], but I’m really unsure about the conditioning environment. To some extent they’re in free variation, though I think it’s also dependent on surrounding vowel height and the presence or absence of consonants: butter [ˈbɐɾɐ ~ ˈbɐtˢɐ ~ ˈbɐs̻ɐ], bat [ˈbæts], banter [ˈbæntˢɐ], better [ˈbes̻ɐ ~ ˈbeɾɐ], bitter [ˈbɪs̻ɐ ~ ˈbɪᵗs̪ɐ], dotpoint [ˈdɔt̚pʰo̞intˢ].

(As an aside, I’m really unsure about the exact value of [s̻]. I’ve transcribed it as laminal, but I have a feeling the difference is in sibilance: it’s almost like [θ̠], though I still perceive some sibilance.)

I can imagine it with a real ocker accent maybe (I'm Aussie too), but I don't do any of this at all. I'm more likely to tap and glottalise my t's than fricate or super aspirate them.

[Travis B.]

I can imagine it with a real ocker accent maybe (I'm Aussie too), but I don't do any of this at all. I'm more likely to tap and glottalise my t's than fricate or super aspirate them.

How much variation is there between Australian English varieties? I had always heard that the internal differences were more associated with register and class than with place.

[Richard W]

I have unconditional affrication of /t/: when not flapped to [ɾ], my /t/ is almost always [tˢ], or sometimes even just [s].

Sounds like the 'second' Germanic consonant shift, which seems to be in progress in much of Germanic - even Danish can exhibit it.

This would be unlikely, given that this seems to be a specifically Southern Hemisphere English feature.

Obviously Neighbours and Home and Away have a lot to answer for. Seriously, it's older than that. Some people have associated it with Estuarine English, but to me it looks like an exaggeration of the aspiration of voiceless stops, and thus liable to develop in any form of Germanic with aspiration as a concomitant of voicelessness.

[HourouMusuko]

I remember in high school drawing attention to a friend's palatalized pronunciation of the word "dry" (more like /dʒɹaɪ/) so that he became hyper-aware of it and started saying it over and over and wondering why his pronunciation was unusual. I didn't mean to cause him linguistic distress, but it was a little funny.

Another common but seldom-discussed feature is that when I say a word like "important", my tongue is in the alveolar position on the onset of that final syllable so that it comes out like /ɪmˈpɔɹʔn̩t/ but with maybe an "unreleased" alveolar (I'm not sure how you would transcribe that). What I hear many people say is something more like /ɪmˈpɔɹʔɪnt/ with no alveolarity involved in the last syllable's onset, just a pure glottal stop (in a related observation I've also noted many instances where a schwa is pronounced more like /ɪ/).

Similarly, I was listening to a tech YouTuber say "button" over and over in his video and it made me notice this more. He was saying something like /ˈbʌʔən/ or /ˈbʌʔɪn/ but I again have that "alveolarized" glottal stop (and more of a syllabic /n/ than a schwa or /ɪ/) so that there is more of a /t/ in there somewhere, although not to the point of how I'd pronounce it if I were enunciating and trying to fully pronounce the /t/.

[Travis B.]

I remember in high school drawing attention to a friend's palatalized pronunciation of the word "dry" (more like /dʒɹaɪ/) so that he became hyper-aware of it and started saying it over and over and wondering why his pronunciation was unusual. I didn't mean to cause him linguistic distress, but it was a little funny.

This is actually a perfectly normal pronunciation in English; it is extremely common to affricate /tr/ and /dr/ in English.

[anteallach]

I can imagine it with a real ocker accent maybe (I'm Aussie too), but I don't do any of this at all. I'm more likely to tap and glottalise my t's than fricate or super aspirate them.

How much variation is there between Australian English varieties? I had always heard that the internal differences were more associated with register and class than with place.

The Australians here might be able to say more than I can, but the main thing I'm aware of is the more complete TRAP-BATH split in Adelaide than elsewhere. (All Australian accents have it to some extent, but many of them only have it when the vowel is followed by a fricative, e.g. bath but not chance.) I think Adelaide accents sound a bit different in other ways as well.

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

[Darren]

I can imagine it with a real ocker accent maybe (I'm Aussie too), but I don't do any of this at all. I'm more likely to tap and glottalise my t's than fricate or super aspirate them.

How much variation is there between Australian English varieties? I had always heard that the internal differences were more associated with register and class than with place.

The Australians here might be able to say more than I can, but the main thing I'm aware of is the more complete TRAP-BATH split in Adelaide than elsewhere. (All Australian accents have it to some extent, but many of them only have it when the vowel is followed by a fricative, e.g. bath but not chance.) I think Adelaide accents sound a bit different in other ways as well.

As an Adelaideian, I can confirm this; TRAP/BATH is relatively consistently split in my dialect. According to wikipedia, graph is pronounced by 86% of people in Adelaide with /äː/, but with /æ/ by 100% (?) in Hobart and 70% in Melbourne.

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

Don't know about this, but /l/ definitely does some weird stuff. All of my close back vowels converge before /l/ (i.e. pull pool paul are almost identical), and before close front vowels it tends to syllabify (i.e. seal tends towards [sɪi̯ɫ̩]).

[bradrn]

I can imagine it with a real ocker accent maybe (I'm Aussie too), but I don't do any of this at all. I'm more likely to tap and glottalise my t's than fricate or super aspirate them.

How much variation is there between Australian English varieties? I had always heard that the internal differences were more associated with register and class than with place.

I’ve certainly heard that there’s a small amount of variation, but oddly enough I tend to hear non-Australian accents more often than Australian ones, so I really wouldn’t know. (From my university lecturers I mostly hear British, American and Indian accents. Classmates do have Australian accents, but there’s very little variation given that we’re all roughly the same age from the same city. A true ‘broad Australian’ accent I’ve only ever really heard from farmers come to Sydney for the Easter Show.)

How much variation is there between Australian English varieties? I had always heard that the internal differences were more associated with register and class than with place.

The Australians here might be able to say more than I can, but the main thing I'm aware of is the more complete TRAP-BATH split in Adelaide than elsewhere. (All Australian accents have it to some extent, but many of them only have it when the vowel is followed by a fricative, e.g. bath but not chance.) I think Adelaide accents sound a bit different in other ways as well.

As an Adelaideian, I can confirm this; TRAP/BATH is relatively consistently split in my dialect. According to wikipedia, graph is pronounced by 86% of people in Adelaide with /äː/, but with /æ/ by 100% (?) in Hobart and 70% in Melbourne.

I also have a consistent TRAP/BATH split, but as a Sydneysider that’s probably from my parents’ SAE. (Interestingly I seem to have some spelling pronunciations with BATH where others have TRAP, e.g. franchise.)

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

Don't know about this, but /l/ definitely does some weird stuff. All of my close back vowels converge before /l/ (i.e. pull pool paul are almost identical), and before close front vowels it tends to syllabify (i.e. seal tends towards [sɪi̯ɫ̩]).

Exactly the same for me. My /l/ is [ɫ] in the onset, and [w~ɰ] in the coda (unspecified for rounding): pull [pʰuw], pool [pʰuːw], paul [pʰo͡uw], seal [ˈsijʊw]. (vs put [pʰʊt], poot [pʰʉːt], pawn [pʰo̞ːn])

[vlad]

The Australians here might be able to say more than I can, but the main thing I'm aware of is the more complete TRAP-BATH split in Adelaide than elsewhere. (All Australian accents have it to some extent, but many of them only have it when the vowel is followed by a fricative, e.g. bath but not chance.) I think Adelaide accents sound a bit different in other ways as well.

As an Adelaideian, I can confirm this; TRAP/BATH is relatively consistently split in my dialect. According to wikipedia, graph is pronounced by 86% of people in Adelaide with /äː/, but with /æ/ by 100% (?) in Hobart and 70% in Melbourne.

1) I think it's important to distinguish between sound changes applying under different conditions in different dialects, and arbitrary lexical variation in individual words. People who have /æ/ in graph still have /ɑː/ in staff, laugh, half, etc. It's not like the change didn't apply before /f/, it's just that some words were given spelling pronunciations or were influenced by the pronunciation in other dialects.

2) It's not that bath undergoes the split while chance doesn't, it's that the split has different outcomes for these words. All three of trap, bath and chance have different vowels. (Or are there really Australians who have the same vowel in trap and chance?)

[Moose-tache]

Case in point: there may be future linguists who, naive of the influence of American media in Britain, scratch their heads over why the TRAP-BATH split seems to have a random exception in the word "badass."

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

Can confirm. Born and raised in Melbourne by Victorian parents. I noticed that "~el" and "~al" were both [æl] when I started conlanging, before I had the linguistic terminology to describe it. And I thought it was universal! (Universel?) It made Superman's birthname Kal-El rhyme until I started using STRUT for the first syllable.

[Darren]

The Australians here might be able to say more than I can, but the main thing I'm aware of is the more complete TRAP-BATH split in Adelaide than elsewhere. (All Australian accents have it to some extent, but many of them only have it when the vowel is followed by a fricative, e.g. bath but not chance.) I think Adelaide accents sound a bit different in other ways as well.

As an Adelaideian, I can confirm this; TRAP/BATH is relatively consistently split in my dialect. According to wikipedia, graph is pronounced by 86% of people in Adelaide with /äː/, but with /æ/ by 100% (?) in Hobart and 70% in Melbourne.

1) I think it's important to distinguish between sound changes applying under different conditions in different dialects, and arbitrary lexical variation in individual words. People who have /æ/ in graph still have /ɑː/ in staff, laugh, half, etc. It's not like the change didn't apply before /f/, it's just that some words were given spelling pronunciations or were influenced by the pronunciation in other dialects.

The word graph is just an example of a wider change.

(Or are there really Australians who have the same vowel in trap and chance?)

Yeah I think so. Or at least the same vowel quality.

[Travis B.]

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

Can confirm. Born and raised in Melbourne by Victorian parents. I noticed that "~el" and "~al" were both [æl] when I started conlanging, before I had the linguistic terminology to describe it. And I thought it was universal! (Universel?) It made Superman's birthname Kal-El rhyme until I started using STRUT for the first syllable.

Along those lines, I don't see how the current system in the English here in southeastern Wisconsin where in the vast majority of words, aside from a few like already and all right where the /l/ is elided, where each possible combination of a vowel followed by vocalized /l/ is preserved can possibly be stable in the long term, particularly as the back vowels plus /l/ form diphthongs with very short offglides that are very similar to other back monophthongs.

[Sol717]

Supposedly Victoria has a merger of TRAP and DRESS before /l/.

Can confirm. Born and raised in Melbourne by Victorian parents. I noticed that "~el" and "~al" were both [æl] when I started conlanging, before I had the linguistic terminology to describe it. And I thought it was universal! (Universel?) It made Superman's birthname Kal-El rhyme until I started using STRUT for the first syllable.

At least you can take solace in the fact that New Zealand has this merger as well (a lot of the stuff said here about the AusE realisation of coda /l/ applies to NZE too).