evolution of the australian accent?

[zibb3r]

OK. so i know the accent kinda evolved liked this:

~Broad, 18th Century
~Cultivated, 20th Century, early late 19th century
~Broad, middle - late @0th Century
~General, 21st Century

So why did it start off as broad, then why the change to cultivated and the broad again, and now general???

Thanks, love you guys :smitten:

[Ghost!]

Well, the children are instigators of change in language, so when all the different dialects/ethnolects came together as settlers in Australia the children mixed all of the sounds they heard into a single broad language. That's how I thought it was...

[zibb3r]

My teahcer said something about the war and breaking away from england?

[Ghost!]

Sorry, completely skipped over the rest of your question. Australia had a duty serve the empire, and considering the world domination Britain had it was natural for us to want to stay close to our mother land, so we spoke as Cultivated as we could. Then, with the WWI we lost thousands and thousands of good men and women, and the only reason we could say was that it was 'for the empire', and with that a lot of Australian's broke away from Britain in all different ways in their life, including developing a more unique Aussie identity with the language. I'm not 100% on why we went general but..

[azngirl456]

I'm entirely sure on this but I think it's got to do with general accent being a compromise between a cultivated and a broad. Teachers, news presenters and australian tv dramas usually use the general accent so the prevalence of it is higher. Children and esl students are more exposed to the general accent so they're more likely to adopt it.

[vexx]

Watch 'Sounds of Oz' this has a lot of information on the Australian Accent