Australians' "slurred" accent influenced by drunken early settlers, says academic

The distinctive Australian accent originated with the country's boozing early-settlers, according to Melbourne-based communications experts.

Public speaking and communication lecturer at Victoria University, Dean Frankel, believes the "drunken slurring" of Australia's colonial settlers has contributed to the way people speak today.

Frankel said the slurring of speech, a typical symptom of over-indulgence in alcohol, had been passed down from generation to generation, eventually leading to the population possessing "drunken Aussie-speak."

"Aussie-speak developed in the early days of colonial settlement from a cocktail of English, Irish, Aboriginal and German - before another mystery influence was slipped into the mix," Frankel said in comments published by Fairfax Media on Thursday.

"Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns."

Frankel also told the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) that alcohol was a part of Australia's DNA and was "like guns to America."

In the past, most experts have concluded the Australian accent - which has a flat, nasal tone - was a combination of dialects brought by the diverse range of settlers.

Frankel said Australians were only using a portion of the alphabet - 23 letters - and poor communications were contributing to problems with domestic violence and mental health.

"The average Australian speaks to just two thirds capacity - with one third of our articulator muscles always sedentary as if lying on the couch," Frankel said.

However, another linguistics expert Dr Rob Pensalfini shot down the theory as "absolute rubbish," saying rationales for national accents were often unfounded.

"They say New Yorkers have nasal voices because they have to cut through the noise of the traffic," Pensalfini told the ABC.

"The original one for Australia was we speak in a slurred and closed-lip way to keep the flies out of their mouths.

"They're all completely baseless ... I want to see the evidence, I want to see the instrumental valuations."

Pensalfini said the standard Australian accent was mostly derived from an English cockney and Irish backgrounds. Enditem