I once correctly identified someone as a Canadian who had lived in Australia for a time by her accent. So it’s definitely possible, even for non native speakers.
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I was thinking of this chap.
Oh well, there goes my joke…
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I was going to look him up, but then I realized I couldn’t be asked.
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Absolutely, this one can.
As an (only) English speaker who grew up with a mix of native, US and UK (and to a lesser extent continental European) popular culture, I find it pretty easy to distinguish accents.
I doubt I’m unique in this respect.
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How about Cheradenine Zakalwe. But we don’t talk about the furniture he made,
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Nah, that was the other guy…
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Australia is pretty weak on regional accents. There’s urban vs. rural (rural sounds more “Australian”) but that’s mostly it. One exception - people from South Australia (Adelaide) can sound a bit more English than the rest of us.
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There are three "a"s in Australian English, and one of them is accent-variable.
So there’s the /æ/ in “cat”, “grab”, “hat”, and that’s pretty solid wherever you are.
There’s the /ɑ/ in “father”, “car” (which in some accents might vary as much as to [a] or [ʌ], but whatever the realisation is, it’s pretty solid in a given accent)
Then there’s the mobile one, let’s call it /ᴀ/. This is the one which could be realised as /æ/ or /ɑ:/ depending on which accent you’re speaking. Adelaide is strongly /ᴀ/ → /ɑ:/. It’s part of the “plumminess” or “Englishness” of that accent. NSW has a tendency that way as well. Victoria tends the other way, /ᴀ/ → /æ/.
This comes out in words like “scallop” /'skᴀl,op/: is it closer to “skallop” or “skollop”? The other canonical shibboleths are Castlemain (in Victoria) and Newcastle (In NSW). The “castle” bit is /'kᴀ,sl/, but the local pronunciations are ['kæ.sl,mein] vs ['nʲu:,kɑ:.sl].
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Fair enough - I hadn’t thought of the alternate pronunciations of “Newcastle” as being regional, but maybe so. For me it’s always been more about local terms for things - having grown up in Queensland I know “port” for “school bag”, but in Victoria where I live now it just gets you a strange look.
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