Australian Question Intonation

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This is what Steven Fry used on Room 101 to describe the way people's voices nowadays go up at the end of their sentences as if they're asking a question all the time. It's a Californian/Australian thing which seems to have infected millions of people in the UK and Ireland. It's really annoying as well. Why has this happened? Nobody in the 1980's or most of the 90's spoke like this.

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Fry was also complaining about the way peple go "I was like" in every sentence instead of "I said".

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)

i do this - AQI- i find it really annoying, how can i stop?

also - how can i stop saying "you know" at the end of every other sentence? i really want to stop doing that, you know?

― jed_ (jed), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

He is obviously a prescriptivist? Sod him? People say 'I went, 'shut up,' too, but that's more entrenched therefore less hated on? Linguistic gatekeepers=dud?

As if Fry's own silly accent were the 'One True Voice' that we should all aspire too? Pah?! What's wrong with the way Australians speak? If he'd said, 'I don't like the way Jamaicans speak' -- well, there might have been problems?

― NRQ (Enrique), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Just fucking stop and tell everyone else you know doing it to also stop and to start talking normal again.

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Nothing really wrong with a certain strand of the Aussi accent sounding like that, just that everybody in these parts seems to be doing it also. When people use it it sounds like they're trying to explain every sentence by stressing the last word at the end of it. I hate that!!

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Language and speech patterns evolve (devolve if you prefer). Live with it.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes but this is the most horrible ever evolution of it.

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:33 (twenty-two years ago)

it is bloody annoying though, you're not asking a question, so don't sounmd like you are!! Unless of course you're looking for validation of everything you say.....

― chris (chris), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Exactly Chris.

― David Gunnip (David Gunnip), Thursday, 12 February 2004 14:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Known to linguists as the high rise terminal (or HRT - you can see why it hasn't caught the public's imagination), the increased usage among young Britons has been identified with the popularity of Neighbours and Home and Away in the early 90s.
HRT is a commonplace ritual of USA-speak, particularly noticeable among Californian teens. The prevalance, worldwide, of this linguistic phenomenon has been associated with the speaker's insecurity, allowing the speaker a noncommittal approach to statements. This is, of course, paramount to insecure teenagers.

If you will allow me a moment of esotercism, Yukio Mishima describes a character in his novel The Temple Of Dawn (pub 1970, set in the late 50s IIRC) as having "the habit of terminating a question with a rising English inflection". It is not known where the character, Ying Chan, learned her English.

― Canada Briggs (Canada Briggs), Thursday, 12 February 2004 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Not all AUstralians speak like that, though. Even here its somewhat regarded as a wee bit of a dim way of sounding (IMNSHO)

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 12 February 2004 22:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm most often accused of using a sing-song lilting voice when I ask a question, rather than any kind of higher pitched inflection at the end of the sentence.

― ipsofacto (ipsofacto), Thursday, 12 February 2004 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

this is far more of a kiwi thing to do than an oz one

― the surface noise (electricsound), Thursday, 12 February 2004 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I dunno, I've known people who do it, but (sorry, I'm going to steretype hideously here) it seems to be females. Big haired hairdresser greek/italian effie style females. Who I went to school with. Like, you knoiiiwww?

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 12 February 2004 23:20 (twenty-two years ago)

It is not us Aussie blokes that lift the tone at the end of the drone. Our method is to say as little as possible because extended speech interupts the beer flow.

Aussie women however....I think it all started with Kylie..who now sounds like a Pom.

regards,

REB

― Rik E Boy (Rik E Boy), Friday, 13 February 2004 01:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I do it semi-consciously when I'm speaking to somebody whose first language isn't English - it's a way of checking they understand what I'm saying.

My Mum reckons my sister and I began saying Naau instead of No when the BBC started showing Neighbours.

― Madchen (Madchen), Friday, 13 February 2004 09:34 (twenty-two years ago)

six months pass...

It seems to have stopped these days... so much so that I actually miss it!!!!!

― Alter Ego, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 11:05 (twenty-one years ago)

It seems to have stopped these days... so much so that I actually miss it!!!!!

― Alter Ego, Wednesday, 25 August 2004 11:06 (twenty-one years ago)

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