The Australian accent developed because so many early settlers were drunk. Dean Frenkel, a communications expert at Victoria University in Melbourne, said that the first British arrivals to the country were such big drinkers that the distortion (失真) to their speech caused a verbal change that persists to this day.
Academic Mr Frenkel wrote in the Australian newspaper The Age, "Our forefathers regularly got drunk together, and through their frequent interactions added an alcoholic slur (模糊) to our national speech patterns. For the past two centuries, from generation to generation, the drunken Australian accent continues to be taught by parents to their children."
Mr Frenkel continued, "The average Australian speaks to just two-thirds capacity — with one-third of our speaking muscles always keep still as if lying on the couch. Missing consonants can include missing ‘t's (Impordant), ‘l's (Austraya) and ‘s's (yesh), while many of our vowels are lazily transformed into other vowels, especially ‘a's to ‘e's(stending) and ‘i's to ‘oi's (noight)."
The Australian accent has historically lacked regional variation because although the communities began as isolated (孤立的) settlements, there was a great deal of internal migration, particularly from Sydney where the first accent began.
The most common fear people have about the Australian accent is that it's becoming more Americanised. But Dr Felicity Cox, an associate professor of linguistics at Macquarie University, said that accents are remarkably resistant to change from factors such as social media, and as long as people want to be known as Australian, they will keep the distinctive Australian sound. It will always remain a strong marker of national identity.
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