The 'R' is Silent: How to Pronounce Cairns and Other Australian Cities
Cairns, the unofficial capital of Far North Queensland, has a rogue silent ‘r’ and is pronounced like ‘Cans’, but you’ll want to really drag out that ‘a’ sound to say it like the Aussies. We’re a laidback island-cum-continent nation with a vernacular to match — blame it on the endless summer! National treasure and comedy darling Kitty Flanagan once reflected on our tendency to drop the ‘r’ from almost any word, even where it’s not supposed to be silent, for example: ‘caaaa’ instead of ‘car’. ‘It’s about face shape, that’s what accents are all about — face shape,’ she says. ‘The Americans are all the way in the front of the face,’ meaning they hold words in the front of their mouths, rounding their ‘r’s. For Australian words and accents, take on a relaxed, wide open mouth shape, for example: ‘Caaaaaaans’. Oila! You’ll be sounding like a local in no time.
How to Pronounce Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra
Cairns is the fourth most visited city in Australia, after Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. I have no doubt that most of you have Sydney down pat. Many of us have grown up with a famous Sydney or Sidney in our lives, if it wasn’t the city it was scream queen Sidney Prescott, jazz singer Sidney Bechet, Hollywood hottie and diplomat Sidney Poitier, or — arguably the flavour of the moment — Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney. Sydney, like ‘sid-knee’. How easy is that? And it’s pretty much the same in any dialect.
Brisbane and Melbourne, on the other hand, seem to get tourists a little more tongue-tied. Most pronounce the first half of these cities correctly, it’s the end of their names where they fumble. ‘Bane’ is not pronounced like ‘bane of my existence’, and ‘bourne’ does not rhyme with ‘born’. Instead, in both cases we say ‘bin’. As in, ‘Bris-bin’ and ‘Mel-bin’. Or, if you want to be really colloquial, Brissy and Melbs.
Canberra is a beast of its own. Aptly named after the local Aboriginal word for ‘meeting place’, Canberra is Australia’s capital city. It’s the place designated for official parliamentary business, and on its naming day in 1913 the then Governor-General's wife, Lady Denman, declared, ‘I name the capital of Australia, Canberra — the accent is on the Can.’ A smart little double entendre endorsing a ‘can do’ future for the city and placing emphasis on that good old Aussie vernacular. So the ‘can’ in Canberra is pronounced similarly to the ‘can’ in Cairns, and the ‘berra’ is simply pronounced like ‘bra’, with a short abrasive ‘a’ sound: ‘Can-bra’.
More Tips on Nailing the Aussie Vernacular
Not only do Australian's tend to drop the 'r', we also like to drop the entire ending of some words. For example, 'afternoon' becomes 'arvo', 'morning' becomes 'mornin', 'talking' becomes 'talkin', 'biscuit' is 'bikkie', 'breakfast' is 'brekkie', 'service station' is 'servo', and so on. There's a lot to learn, young Jedi, but a simple rule of thumb is to just keep the first syllable of a word and tack an 'o' or and 'ie' onto the end.
