With Australian media putting the boot into the All Blacks, it's perhaps appropriate that attention was turned to Australia's weak spot: the accent.
Australians' distinctive accent has its origins in the "drunken slurring" of the heavy-drinking early settlers, according to a communication expert from the country.
In an impassioned call for Australian schools to teach verbal expression and delivery, Dean Frenkel, a public speaking and communication lecturer at Victoria University in Melbourne, said "drunken Aussie-speak" was first established generations ago but has continued to be passed on to children by sober parents. "The Australian alphabet cocktail was spiked by alcohol," he 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. Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and through their frequent interactions unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns."
Mr Frenkel said poor communication was "not related to class" but was evident among all sectors of Australian society. "The average Australian speaks to just two thirds capacity - with one third of our articulator muscles always sedentary as if lying on the couch," he wrote. "Missing consonants can include missing 't's (impordant), 'l's (Austraya) and 's's (yesh), while many of our vowels are lazily transformed into other vowels, especially 'a's to 'e's (stending) and 'i's (New South Wyles), and 'i's to 'oi's (noight)."
