AE 377 REPLAY - How To Improve Your Australian Accent with Candice Moll - Part 1

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Learn Australian English in this episode of The Aussie English Podcast where special guest Candice Moll teaches you how to improve your Australian accent.

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Transcript of AE 377 REPLAY - Interview: How To Improve Your Australian Accent with Candice Moll - Part 1

G'day guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have something a little different, a little special for you guys. I've contacted a friend of mine from YouTube, Candice Moll, who is a fellow Australian, but she's living abroad. She's an actor, and a voice actor, and is really good with accents.

She's made a few really good videos on YouTube describing how to replicate an Australian accent. So I thought that I would try to kill two birds with one stone and not only have a fellow Australian English speaker on the podcast, or at least the audio from one of her videos on the podcast, but also a video talking about how to perfect an Australian accent. Okay, so hopefully you guys enjoy this video.

You can jump over to her channel on YouTube at Candice Moll. That's two words C A N D I C E M O L L. Okay. And the link will be in this episode. And you can also go and visit her at www.CandiceMoll.com So make sure you go over there, subscribe to her channel and say g'day from Aussie English. Enjoy the episode guys.

Hello there, YouTubers! My name is Candice and I am an Australian actor. And I, I've been meaning to make this video for a little while because one of the things that I do is voice acting. Which means that I need to learn new accents on a regular basis. And one of the things that I do often is look up on YouTube to see how different accents and dialects work.

So I thought that I would do one for anyone trying to learn how to use an Australian dialect. Because it is a tricky one, and often there is a bit of confusion between different types of English or British accents. And they tend to merge together a little bit with Australian things, and it becomes a bit of a, a bit of a mix.

So I thought that I would just give you a couple of little tips, just in case you're trying to learn the Australian accent. Now my accent is a little bit mild, largely because I've done a lot of travelling and I currently live in the US. However, I'm also from Adelaide, so Adelaide is in South Australia. And it's a little bit different from Sydney. So if I say things a little bit differently to how you would expect, that's probably why. The differences in the dialects in Australia are not as strong as they are in the UK or in the US. But there are slight differences, so I might touch on that a little bit.

So the first thing I'm going to talk about is- and this is, I'm focusing on things that you may not have heard before. There's a couple of different videos online about different Australians talking about different things, but I didn't see any that touched on this.

So the first thing we're going to talk about is, you may have heard, obviously, that Australians don't pronounce their R at the end of words. So, what tends to happen is like with the Boston accent. You basically replace the R with an H so /car/ becomes /cah/. Anything that ends in the R sound, just keep your mouth open and say /ah/ instead. Just like that.

So the interesting thing is that there is a bit of an exception to the rule. When you have two vowel sounds together in a sentence. So the end of one word, and the beginning of another word, if it's a vowel sound, we put a connecting R in the middle.

So people often say, Americans will often say to me, Oh, Australians put Rs where they don't belong. That's true. And it's just so that the flow of the speech is a little bit easier for us.

So, for example, if I were to say "Fiona is going", I would say /Fiona(r)is going/. /Fiona(r)is/.

The R comes at the beginning of the second word. /Fiona(r)is coming./ /Fiona(r)is coming./ So it sounds like I'm saying /Fionar/, but I'm not. I'm putting an R in between the two vowel sounds.

Another example might be "The car is moving." Now that does end in an R. The letter R, but of course we don't pronounce the letter R. It's still a R which sounds like a vowel sound. So we would say instead of /the car is moving/ we would say /the ca(r)is moving/, /the ca(r)is moving/, /the ca(r)is moving/. Okay, so that's one little trick to help your Australian accent sound a bit more authentic.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about was, and this is really tricky for a lot of Americans who are trying to do an Australian accent, they often turn it into a bad English or British accent or dialect, I should say dialect. So basically a little trick that might help you with that.

The difference between, for example, the word 'what'. The shape of the mouth stays the same for a lot of British dialects and the Australian dialect. So it's a /oah/ /oah/, it's not /ah/, it's /oah/ so down. But the mistake that a lot of people make is that they try to stop the sound in their throat. And it sounds like /wot/, /wot/ That's what makes it sound British.

What Australians do is actually stop the sound by placing their tongue here and say, you don't pronounce the T, it's just /woat/ /woat/. So can you hear the difference between /wot/ and /woat/? Very slight difference. /wot/ /woat/ /wot/ /woat/ Very slight difference, but it will help you to get a true, authentic Australian sound.

This is also true for the D sound. The word 'good'. The difference- I know there's so many different dialects with British, but I'm more thinking about just standard PR British. The D, like they might say, for example 'good', right? So they'd say /gud/. Ignore my British accent if it's wrong because it's difficult to switch back and forth.

But what we say, the word 'good', it's a /oo/ /good/ like a monkey. /oo/ But we don't always pronounce the D. We'd say /good/. Same again. /good/ /good/ /good/ instead of /gud/ /good/. Right. "Yeah. That's good. That's really good." So I'm not pronouncing the D, I'm just placing my tongue right there. Okay.

There are exceptions to the rules, of course. And occasionally someone might pronounce a T or a D. It's not wrong. Often, for example, the T will be pronounced a little bit heavier if someone's annoyed. 'Don't' /don't/ or /don't/. If you five don't.

So, that takes me on to the O sound. Now there are differences between the states. They're so mild. But I'm going to touch on them because I'm from Adelaide. I'm not from Sydney, so it's important that you can just start to train your ear to hear different things.

So the difference between an Adelaide 'no' and a Sydney 'no' is Sydney is a little bit wider. They go out then in. /nao/ /nao/ Right. /ao/ /ao/. So start on an /ao/ right. It's ridiculous I know.

But in in Adelaide we tend to go in and out. /noi/ /noi/ /noi/. Right. That's exaggerated. So the Adelaide sound sounds a bit like 'doink' the O I that you might have in 'doink'. /noi/ /noi/ Doink. /noi/ right.

But with Sydney, you go out then in and you say /nao/. And if you're new to accents, check out Amy Walker's videos on YouTube because she's very, very good. And I liked the way she spoke about the "no" sound. If you're American, imagine that you're saying with your accent. N A R /nar/, right. /nar/ /nar/, and then drop the R off the end. /nao/ /nao/ /nao/.

So it's, that's more of a Sydney sound where it's /nao/, /nao/. Right. Instead of /noi/, /noi/. And that's the same with "don't" and any O sound.

So what made me think of "don't" was the /don't/ because that's how little kids tell you that they're annoyed. "Don't!"

So I think that that's all from me today. There's a couple of little things just to get you moving along and yeah, do look for some other things. Check out some other videos. And by all powers combined, you will have an Australian accent. Bye!

Okay, guys. So that was Candice Moll from YouTube. Candice Moll, two words. Or you can find her at www.candicemoll.com. The links will be in the episode. I hope you enjoyed it guys, and remember to go over to her YouTube channel, give her a thumbs up and subscribe! Cheers guys! Chat soon.