Australian accent: 'Drunken slur' caused by heavy drinking of early settlers

The Australian accent is the result of heavy drinking by the first colonial settlers, a communication expert has controversially claimed. Dean Frenkel, a lecturer in public speaking and communications at Victoria University, has said that the "drunken slur" is "not related to class".

"The Australian alphabet cocktail was spiked by alcohol. Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns...," Frenkel wrote in The Age. "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," he said.

The average Australian speaks with just two thirds of their articulator capacity, the researcher added. "The remaining articulator muscles are always sedentary, which makes Australians miss consonants such as 't' (impordant for important), 'i' (Austraya for Australia) and 's' (yesh instead of yes)." He also claimed that many of "our vowels are transformed into other vowels, like 'a's to 'e's (stending) and 'i's (New South Wyles), and 'i's to 'oi's (noight)".

However, most experts believe that the base of the Australian dialect was formed in the early 1800s, after settlers came from Britain and Ireland, brought along their dialects, which later got mixed to create the Australian accent.

"The children in the new colony would have been exposed to a wide range of different dialects from all over England but mainly the south east, particularly from London," according to linguists at Macquarie University. "They would have created the new dialect from elements present in the speech they heard around them in response to their need to express peer solidarity. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect of the children would have been strong enough to deflect the influence of new children."