NARRATOR
What do you call this?
He holds up a cylinder of meat labelled with the word 'Devon'.
NARRATOR
Well, in Sydney, we'd say it was 'devon'. But since this is a national program, it's likely that there are more than a million of you viewers who'd disagree.
A series of reporters from different locations
MAN 2
In Perth, they call it 'polony'.
MAN 3
In Melbourne, it's 'stras', short for 'strasburger'.
WOMAN
And in Adelaide, it's called 'fritz'.
MAN 4
The knob of stras.
MAN 5
And by the time it gets to Tasmania, it's become 'Belgium'.
NARRATOR
Then again, Darwin is a different kettle of fish. Possibly because it's the most diverse of our cities, it tends, as it does with many things, to embrace the lot.
MAN
In Darwin, this meat is called either 'devon', 'Windsor', 'fritz' or 'luncheon'.
NARRATOR
And even then, there's someone who disagrees.
BOY
No, it's not, it's 'circle meat'.
NARRATOR
Circle meat.
It was, in fact, devon, fritz, Belgium, strasburger, whatever, which set us off on what's proved to be a wild goose chase in search of an Australian dialect. If we showed that much flair with a simple sausage, then were our States becoming as individual as, say, those in America? Judging by the bulk of letters I've received on the subject, many of you thought, as I did, that, indeed, you can tell where a person comes from in Australia by the way he speaks. Well, according to the experts, there is really no regional dialect in Australia. Plenty of idiosyncrasies, sure, and quite a marked difference in speech depending on your social status, but nothing which really separates our speech geographically.
Well, this, of course, is quite fascinating in itself. If you can trace English accents almost down to the street, why in a country with cities 3,000 miles apart is our speech so uniform? Well, we'll be looking at that question and your letters in a moment. But firstly, who does decide how we speak? Or, for that matter, how we should speak? In some ways, you can blame us at the ABC.
A group of people sitting around a table
NARRATOR
Each month at Broadcast House in Sydney, there's a meeting of an august body which includes no less than three university professors and an assortment of our own staff. Today, they're embroiled in a problem of Shakespearean proportions. 'Broccolee' or 'broccolie'? That is the question.
MAN
Is it surprising to other members of the committee that…
MAN 2
So many people seem to go for 'broccolie'. I don't know that the… I've no authority for 'broccolee' except that it's what I've always said. I'd be interested in why 'broccolie' should be preferred by anyone.
MAN 3
It's analogous with 'stimulie' sort of ending.
MAN 2
Or 'stimulee'.
MAN 3
Or 'stimulee', yes.
ALL
(Chatter)
MAN
Is it originally an Italian word?
MAN 3
Yes, it's originally Italian.
MAN 2
Well, if it's Italian, isn't the 'e' in Italian pronounced 'ee' and not 'eye'?
MAN 3
Yes, but we're speaking English.
MAN 2
Yes, but I think we have to have some excuse for going to something else when 'broccolee' is perfectly straightforward.
MAN
# You say 'ee-ther' and I say 'eye-ther'# You say 'nee-ther' and I say 'neye-ther'# Ee-ther, eye-ther, nee-ther, neye-ther# Let's call the whole thing off# You like po-tay-to and I like po-tah-to# You like to-may-to and I like to-mah-to# Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, to-may-to, to-mah-to# Let's call the whole thing off. #
NARRATOR
Let's call the whole thing off, which is exactly what they did for the time being. The committee decided it needed more information on usage, and pressed on.
MAN 4
Um, 'lay' is transitive. 'Lie', intransitive. 'Lay' requires an object — a bird, an egg, a table. 'Lie' cannot have one unless it is the reflexive, 'I lie myself down.' The more correct form of which is, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.' The past tense of 'lie' is 'lay' too. 'I lay on the bed.' The past tense of 'lay' one is 'laid'. 'He laid her on the bed.' The distinction carries over into the use of nouns. A good lie is different from a good lay.
NARRATOR
We'll be back to the committee to see an even more controversial word being thrashed out in a moment. But in the meantime, some of your own thoughts about the language.
We had most letters about the pronunciation of 'Newcastle'. In New South Wales and South Australia, it's 'cah-stle'. In Victoria and Queensland, it's 'cassle'. But strangely, even the people in Newcastle call themselves 'Novocastrians' and not 'Novocahstrians'. Only Queenslanders are familiar with these things. Port, duchess and tilly. And in Queensland, if I sent a big cheerio to Mum and Dad, it would mean I would be giving them a large cocktail frankfurt. Yabbies are gilgies in Perth, where it's also hill trolley instead of billy cart or soap box. And graziers are pastoralists. In Adelaide, this is a 'pahsty'. In Melbourne, it's often a 'passty', and in Sydney, it's a 'pastey', which in other States is this. According to your letters, some South Australians do climb a 'hool' and not a 'hill'. They also call Paterson's curse 'salvation Jane'. And women in the south apparently still ask for a pair of bras, which I guess is like asking for a quartet of trousers. You've sent us hundreds of these examples, but many of you told us of some more subtle problems with the language. For example, Sarah Foster, who's 13, shifted last year from Melbourne to Townsville, and she writes — 'First, in Melbourne, we would say, 'It's hot, isn't it?" Whereas here you say,"It's hot, eh?" You say in Melbourne, "She's good-looking, though." Here you say, 'She's good-looking but." After a while, you find yourself saying crazy things like, "It's good but, eh?"
It's an amusing geographical difference, but the fact is that there can be as much diversity in pronunciation amongst a room full of Australians as there is across the entire nation.