Has anyone else noticed how many Australians mispronounce the name of the American city of Los Angeles? When I mention this to most people they say that they've never noticed it before. But many Australians pronounce it as 'Loss AN-jel-eez', whereas most Americans pronounce it as 'Loss AN-jel-ess'. A similar thing happens with New Orleans, which Americans utter as 'Noo OR-lunz' while the Aussies say 'Nyoo Or-LEENZ'. I know that we pronounce the word 'new' differently, and I'm not suggesting that Australians should say 'noo'. It's the 'Orleans' part of the city's name that is markedly at odds with the standard American pronunciation when issuing from the mouths of many Australians, and which we could easily modify without breaking the rules of standard Australian pronunciation.
Yes, it's not particularly important and there are many more pressing concerns that I should be preoccupying myself with. But I figure that if you're going to Rome, then you might as well try to speak the local lingo with a Latin accent
On a similar topic, hardly anyone I speak with or write to has noticed how the 's' sound before a 't' in the mouths of many younger Australians has morphed into a 'sh' sound. So what I would pronounce as 'Australian' becomes 'Aushtralian' for these speakers. I know that it may well become standard Australian pronunciation in 50 years' time, but I cringe every time I hear it. And if I hear several consecutive words with the 'st' collection of consonants squashed together in this way – as in 'I'm a shtruggling Aushtralian shtudent' – then I want to hurl something at the radio or TV. More than a few sportspeople seem to be the arch offenders. Listen to Shane Warne next time he does a TV ad.
All these non-standard versions seem to follow rules. In this case, the rule appears to be: 'If an 's' precedes a 't', then pronounce the two letters as 'sht'. But, strangely, I don't think I've ever heard the word 'steadily' pronounced as 'shteadily'. I'm just trying to conjure up from my memory examples of words that contain the 'st' sound, and it seems that not all of them get the 'sht' treatment. I have no idea why, but perhaps an observant linguist could explain why only some words containing 'st' are changed in this way.
What amazes me about this phenomenon is that hardly anyone I know is aware of it. But if I capture a grab of audio and play it back to my buttonholed interlocutor, then they can instantly detect what I'm talking about. But before I pointed it out they were oblivious to it.
