Can’t hear the difference: 04 (Australian / New Zealand / South African / Zimbabwean accent)

 

I twigged on the Aussie vs Kiwi accent quickly enough, mainly because of the more obvious long vs short vowel sounds.

    An example:  “pin” in Aussie accent would be more like “peen” (to my ears), whilst Kiwi accent would render it more like “pun” (to my ears).  

    Ha!  Trying to get the IPA for them, I come across this:

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The best example I've heard are the words 'pin/pen'. So your stereotypical Australian accent would say 'pin/pehn' while the stereotypical New Zealand accent would say 'puhn/pin'. That said, I know lots of people from either side of the Tasman with pretty similar accents. 

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    The South African accent was the next hill to climb, but after I got the Aussie vs Kiwi difference sussed out, the South African accent then started to stand out a bit from them, although I tend to identify the S.African one on a process-of-elimination basis, i.e., it doesn't sound Aussie nor Kiwi, so must be S.African since there're fewer Zimbabweans over here.

    This process-of-elimination criterion was used by a caller on the telephone back in the early 80s when I was sharing a house with six other people (all white and British).  She couldn't see me on the phone, and she couldn't quite place my accent, so she asked if I was from South Africa.

    Again, it comes down to exposure, which leads to the last in this group:  the Zimbabwean accent.  I only knew one Zimbabwean but that was in the second half of the 1980s, and I’d only spent a bit of time with him, which hardly counts.

    My solution for this batch is to now ask, if unsure, “Are you from the southern hemisphere?”, which covers all four of them.