A voice lecturer at the University of Melbourne has dropped a TikTok explaining why some folks pronounce the word “no” as “naur” in an Australian accent and it is quality viewing.
Amy Hume, who works in the theatre and fine arts department at the uni broke down the much-discussed Australian accent into easily digestible, bite-sized chunks. Syllables of knowledge, if you will.
@unimelb Why does the Australian pronunciation of “no” have the world in hysterics? And how many vowels do we cram into the word “no”? 🗣️ A question that’s been circulating finally has answers, thanks to our lecturer in Theatre (Voice) Amy Hume. #UniMelb #naur @Peach PRC
The video begins with a clip of Peach PRC whipping out her signature “naur” pronunciation before Hume gives it the academic explainer treatment.
I got a bloody kick out of this vid. But I’ll admit, I was a tiny bit distracted when Hume kept mentioning “diphthongs” and “monophthongs”.
Before this video, when I heard the word “thongs” I usually started thinking about summer, hot weather, and footwear. Guess you learn something new every day!
It also fills me with an enormous sense of national pride that we’ve managed to squeeze three vowel sounds into a two-letter word. Whoever said Aussies were lazy?
Interestingly, Hume also notes in the video that there are indeed different variations of the Australian accent.
PEDESTRIAN.TV dug into this topic earlier in the year based on the hypothesis that there was, supposedly, a “Melbourne accent”. The whole investigation can be read here.
If you haven’t seen Peach’s original TikTok (which was subsequently sampled and made into an EDM banger by Candy Moore), do yourselves a favour and suss out both videos below.
@peachprc the uber eats bag in the back 💀 Tonight I’ll be eating My Vowels
@candymoore.mp3 #duet with @peachprc tastier than a bunnings sanga #peachprc #remix #naur
We are truly in a renaissance era for the Aussie accent.
As a new generation of young folk discovers shows like Kath & Kim, our willingness to embrace what might previously have been seen as a bogan-esque accent has surged. To this we say “fuck yeah”.
In large part, we probably have TikTok and a smattering of viral Australian accent videos which have been posted to the platform over the past year to thank for this.
@tiffanykrylov Aussie Accent 101 ✏️ #australia #australian #accent #aussie
@brontecrawley Both are pretty accurate tbh. #aussieslang #nocleoor #nocleo
In the meantime, can someone in the government please hook Peach PRC up with an official cultural ambassadorship gig for services to the Australian accent?
We gotta take “naur” to the United Nations ASAP.
