Australia: I Say "Tomato" You Say "To-maa-to"

Most Americans get British and Aussie accents mixed up. Being Chinese obviously qualifies me to decipher the Aussie accent for you. Early settlers in Australia back in the late 1700s were British who, not surprisingly, edged out the Aborigines* and claimed it as a Crown Colony; ergo, Australians speak English. Australian English (AusE) shares the same spelling with British English (BrE) but has a variation in pronunciation, though still a lot more similar than American English (AmE). Americans, on the other hand, have taken out or changed letters from certain words altogether.

1. Brits and Aussies spell words like Color with a "u" as in Colour and Analyze with an "s" like Analyse.
2. Americans have taken out the "i" completely out of Aluminum as in AL-lu-MIN-ium
3. Aussies also pronounce words with "a" the same way Brits do, as in Ba-naaa-na or To-maa-to or Daaance or Baath. While we say AD-ver-tise-ment, they say ad-VER-tise-ment.
4. "R"'s aren't really pronounced the way we do as in Earth or Father. Take the city of Melbourne, Americans say "Mel-born" when in fact it should be pronounced "Mel-bin."
5. And when a word has an "o" as in No, it sounds like there's an extra half syllable in it as if they are saying No-ii. It isn't a full extra syllable but still detectable. Can you imagine all the words with an "o" sound, like no, don't, both, snow, know...now have an extra half syllable? It's a little inefficient if you ask me.
6. Aussies also like adding "y" or "o" at the end when shortening words, like Footy for football, Brekky for breakfast, Telly for television, and Arvo for afternoon, which is kind of cute and endearing.
7. Some words they use are not the same as what we use. For example, do NOT ever say "What team do you root for?" In AusE, root means f*ck or screw. I learned that the hard way, but we'll just leave it at that. (They always get a kick out of Canadians who wear Roots t-shirts - Roots is a popular clothing chain in Canada.)
8. Furthermore, they don't call cell phones cell phones, they say mobile, elevator is lift, and no one uses fall for the season - please say autumn instead. Well, that's about all for now. I'm sure I'll have a lot more Aussie words and colloquialism to share in the near future.

I have a blind date tonight with a local! My friend Debbie from LA hooked me up with her friend Tamie who lives in Melbourne and we are meeting for dinner tonight in the city. Since we don't know what each other looks like, we had to describe ourselves over email. I will be holding a single long stem rose.

*Aborigines are indigenous Australians and are the first human inhabitants from 50,000 years ago who still live in Australia today.

Photo of Melbourne courtesy of National Geographic.