A Victorian accent?

One thing I learned this week

Many moons ago I wrote a series called ‘One thing I learned this week’. That series is now lost to the annals of time and iterations of my website that I never took the time to back up, but my curiosity and penchant for reflective practice remains. I love to learn, to reflect on what I’ve learned and to integrate that learning into my life and this week I learned something that I can’t believe I haven’t learned before, in all of my 51.16 years.

This week I discovered that there is a Victorian accent.

By which I mean an accent attributed to those of us living in the southeastern state of Victoria, Australia, not individuals alive during the period of British history from approximately 1820 to 1914.

I discovered this via an ABC News article and this video…

As a Victorian, albeit one who relocated north and became a New South Welshwoman for a decade or so, I:

a) Had no idea that we had an accent that could be distinguished from that of our southern cousins

b) That other people knew this and non-Victorians mock us for it (although this doesn’t surprise me as mockery of ourselves and each other is a favourite Australian pastime)

c) That a distinguishing feature of this phonological difference has a name - the salary-celery merger.

Now the latter point might seem very specific, perhaps unknown to most of us and therefore not surprising, but I have a particular reason for being startled at my ignorance. You see my name, Ellen, is very difficult for some people to say. It is frequently pronounced by others as Alan. I have noticed this several times over the years and, on reflection, particularly in my now hometown of Ballarat. I assumed that this was a point of individual difference - some people’s mouths just don’t form that ‘e’ sound.

It turns out that this is a statewide feature. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it…

In Victoria, many speakers pronounce /æ/ and /e/ in a way that is distinct from speakers in other states. Many younger speakers from Victoria pronounce the first vowel in "celery" and "salary" the same, so that both words sound like "salary". These speakers will also tend to say "halicopter" instead of "helicopter", and pronounce their capital city (Melbourne) as [ˈmæɫbən]. For some older Victorian speakers, the words "celery" and "salary" also sound the same but instead both sound like "celery". These speakers will also pronounce words such as "alps" as "elps".^[31][32]

The Ellen/Alan confusion even rates a mention in this SBS article from 2015 (that I somehow missed) - Are Melburnians mangling the language?

Now that I’ve learned this I am reflecting on all of my past Ellen/Alan moments. I have so many questions. Were they all in Victoria? (Yes, as far as I can recall. I arrived on the first day of my graduate job in Melbourne’s CBD, very green and already unsure, to a distinct moment of confusion when my manager discovered that the new team member he was expecting, man called Alan, was a 22-year-old woman.)

Did I ever notice my name pronounced as Alan during the 12 years I lived in Sydney? No, I don’t think so but maybe I’m so used to it that I don’t always notice.

Is this more common in Ballarat, where I’ve lived for the last 11 years, than in Melbourne where I grew up? The news articles suggest that the salary-celery merger is a very Melbourne (Malbun?) thing but I’ve also learned, living in a regional city, that the inhabitants of Australia’s metropolises forget that anyone exists outside of their big cities. Melbourne = Victoria as far as many are concerned.

Is this a distinctly Victorian thing or do people in other parts of the world also pronounce my name as Alan? Reddit was up for the debate but the only academic reference I could find, albeit in a rather cursory search, was this - A pleasant malady: The Ellen/Allan Merger in New Zealand English.

Learning prompts curiosity which prompts more learning!

I will now and forever more reflect on this pleasant malady, which has a name, and our friends across the pond every time I’m called Alan.

Onwards and upwards,

*Not Alan.

---

Did you know about the Victorian accent?

Is your name difficult for some to pronounce?

What have you learned this week? Let me know. I’m very curious.

Something you might not know… The Potential Psychology Podcast is coming back! Our newest episode introduces a pivot and the upside of thinking about life as a set of interconnected parts. It’s in production and will be on the air within the week. Subscribe here on Substack for updates and to the podcast on your favourite podcast app or platform. Just search Potential Psychology.