To the casual listener is sounds similar to Cockney pronunciation, but it differs in many ways. Australian speech also tends to be more contracted, with some sounds and even entire syllables omitted. Australian pronunciation has slight regional variations, and city speech tends to be faster than country speech. Some oversimplified rules of Australian speech are to speak slightly nasally, to contract any word of more than 2 syllables and to convert terms into diminutives wherever possible. Most obvious in Australian speech are the "I" sound for "A" and "Ah" for "R". These can best be illustrated with examples of pronunciations such as "egg nishner" = "air conditioner", "G'dye, myte" = "Good day, mate", "Strine" = "Australian", or "Wyne chevva cold share" = "Why don't you have a cold shower." (American English has some similar examples, as in the phrase "Jeet jet?" = "Did you eat yet?")…
