I grew up in Melbourne and it’s always been my home. But at the age of 28 I have only just found out that there’s such thing as a Melbourne accent.
Of course I know the Aussie accent varies. It can be ocker like Steve Irwin’s, bizarrely British like South Australians’, or posh and nasal like the Real Housewives’.
The Australian accent has been broken down into three categories in the past, called broad (typically Brisbane), general (typically Sydney) and cultivated (typically Melbourne — think Cate Blanchett).
But what I didn’t know, and have only recently been informed of by non-Victorians, is that we have a specifically regional accent that sees us pronouncing the short ‘e’ vowel with more of an ‘a’ sound.
Think the word “celery”.
Say it: sehll – eh – ree. That’s how I thought I said it, and how and I’m told most of Australia says it too.
But in Melbourne it often comes out sounding closer to “salary”.
Just heard a woman order a “salary and apple juice” in a cafe and I was like, the Melbourne (Malbourne) accent is real!
— Mel Campbell (@incrediblemelk) February 17, 2019
When this revelation hit me a couple of weeks ago I remembered having noticed it once or twice in the past. But thought it was simply the way that person spoke instead of a local flavour.
I asked my social media followers and was inundated with responses confirming the accent was real. Funnily enough, no one who knew this accent was actually from Melbourne, they’d simply observed.
Have people across the mainland been laughing at us this whole time?? Mocking Melburnians whenever they turned on the AFL or met us interstate?
Apparently so.
A few words came up in my social media poll that respondents said were commonly misunderstood by out-of-towners.
Names were a big one: pronouncing Ellen as Allen or Elly as Ally or Elle as Al had led to a few awkward professional encounters.
Adventures in accents with @noplain.
Me: It’s an elegy.
Jane: It’s an allergy?
Me: Elegy!
Jane: Allergy?
Me: Elegy!!!!
Jane: Allergy????And so on.
— Jessica Alice (@jessica_alice_) September 5, 2018
People also said it’s most noticeable when we say “alaphant” instead of “elephant”, “dalee” instead of “deli” and the top response: Malbourne.
one of my group chats just exists to dunk on the weird melbourne (mALbourne) accent pic.twitter.com/y4lcTlyVYw
— hingo 😘🤌🏽 (@hingo) May 21, 2021
But where did this accent actually come from?
I did a little more digging and found a few forum threads that validated the accent difference. But there wasn’t much else out there until I came across some research from Charles Sturt University‘s Albury, NSW campus that was published in *checks notes* 2002.
The research examined the emergence of new Australian accents, particularly in Victoria, and challenged the notion of a uniform Australian accent.
It conducted studies of young people in NSW and Victoria and suggested teenagers at the time were starting to speak differently to their parents — which is typical between generations around the world.
Speech pathology honours student Sally Squires conducted the research and noted the short “e” vowel, as in “bet”, was pronounced like a short “a” in Victoria.
So it’s not just Melbourne, it’s the whole state.
She travelled to Melbourne and the regional Victorian towns Wangaratta, Swan Hill and Bendigo and recorded the ways teens pronounced “celery”.
More often than not they said it more like “salary”.
But when she crossed the border and asked residents of Albury and other parts of NSW she found it was always pronounced with the short “e”.
“It is the younger speakers who tend to instigate change. It will be people under 25 who are using it. People over 30 won’t be,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2002.
So not only is it a Victorian or Melbourne accent, but it’s a Millennial accent.
I’m not sure if I have it but ask your Victorian friends — someone will.
