Keep your brin miffens off the chicken counter

But ordering fish and chips in Australia may provoke laughter. Photo/File

The saying "accentuate the positive" is a reminder to reconsider what our accents say about us.

As a New Zealander living in the Land of Oz, it always comes as a surprise when the way we pronounce some words is reflected back. Does it really sound like brin miffens when we ask for a bran muffin? Apparently it does.

Another source of verbal embarrassment, pointed out with glee by Australians, is the NZ airport announcement calling "Mr and Mrs Soandso, please come to the "chicken counter". Ordering fush and chups invariably causes some hilarity. I have had Aussies ask me to say it purely for their entertainment.

Australians have their own collection of verbal fur-balls. Despite the influence of recent immigrants from all over the world, examples of the true ocker accent can still be heard. If your only experience of hearing this has been in comedy programmes such as Kath and Kim you will require an emergency fix of restraint.

In my oft misspent youth, I travelled to Britain and Europe. My first encounter with people in rural Devon was a shock. My only previous experience of this region was via TV and radio comedy so when locals talked to me I had to rapidly reset the wavelength.

When a farmer offered me a ride into town saying, "I'm only goin into tooown on me tractor" I nearly fell into a ditch because it was exactly like the punch line in a favourite radio show.

Accents still define status and manners in many parts of Europe. In Britain, we notice the differences because the sounds are familiar to our ear, but in countries such as France and Germany, an accent can also locate and define your place.

To a NZer, the notion a person growing up in a village in Germany may pronounce words with a different inflection to a friend in the next valley is astonishing. When I converse with Germans, they can tell where I learned the language from my strong regional accent (Schwabisch).

Regional accents in Australia are not so obvious to us foreigners, but apparently there are Sydney and Melbourne inflections and another rural tone up-country. The Aussie twang is becoming more noticeable among my fellow passengers on the train to work.

The rise of the Aussie voice at the end of a sentence cuts across when conversations can be going in a zillion ethnic voices and languages, creating a virtual United Nations of commuters.

Recently, a passenger conducted a loud, abrasive phone conversation in strident Strine and finished the call with a definitive command involving the "f" word. The entire carriage fell into stunned silence. Some things are understood in any language.

I was amused by the Sydney Rail plan to provide elocution lessons for staff to improve customers' understanding of their train and station announcements. My experience has been that those with foreign accents speak more clearly than their Australian counterparts, who are more likely to follow the NZ tendency to run all the vowels together into something incomprehensible.

Even the Australian PM does it. On a jaunt to Canada, he described them as Canadia people.

He did international relations no favours by trying to speak French to children in Quebec.

French is a beautiful language that is never enhanced by inserting a nasal twang, and it was no surprise his pronouncement that he was Australia's leader resulted in puzzled silence.

Terry Sarten is a Whanganui musician, writer and social worker currently at large in Sydney. Feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz