Many people have different thoughts on how we got our unique accent, one of which is from mixing the tone of the convicts. The following information is taken from an ABC interview https://goo.gl/or8YP8
"It emerged from a process called leveling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England"
"They all spoke differently and they used different words and what they had to do, in order to communicate with each other, was to level their dialect variations down"
"What our accent really is, is English with the dialect variations taken out. We now think of it as being our dialect, and it is, but that's what was happening in those early [days], it happened really fast. " __________________________________________________ Another theroy was that the convicts were drunk when coming over. The following information is from a news artical https://goo.gl/35h2IH
"Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns. For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, drunken Aussie-speak continues to be taught by sober parents to their children." __________________________________________________
1788 – Colonial settlement established. A new dialect of English begins to take shape.
1830 – By the end of the early Colonial settlement era major features of the accent, called 'General Australian', had developed, with the country’s love of abbreviated words became part of everyday language.
1850 – The Gold Rush leads to internal migration, spreading the general dialect around the continent.
1880 – Extensive migration from England led to an emphasis on elocution and British vowels, which formed the Broad Australian dialect.
1914 to 1918 – Australia's national identity was galvanized during WWI with the creation of terms like Anzac and digger. Australians start to become proud of their accent.
1950 – In the second half of the 20th century, any emphasis on Broad Australian dwindled because of weakening ties with Britain and the General Australian accent became widely accepted as the national norm.
1964 - The term Strine was coined to describe the country's accent, which the majority of people continue to speak today.
