Oi Oi Oi

In saying that, I stress that many songs enjoyed in Australia originate overseas where the width of musical creation and expression exists in much larger populations than our own. After all, we draw our identity from many different places in the world.

The current usage of the song "We Are Australian" by the ABC as part of its generic promotion stresses this part of our national identity, so it is natural and acceptable when rendering the musical and dramatic performances of other nations to use their distinct styles of pronunciation.

An example could be where a local artist singing 'Fiddler On The Roof's "If I Was A Rich Man" would do it with what he perceived as a Jewish accent. But it would not be essential to do so – the thoughts and meaning behind the lyrics would carry through regardless of intonation.

This is not to say that our speech does not vary in style or pronunciation – it does, ranging from the annoyingly lazy nasal, to the toffee-sounding speech attempt at cultural superiority.

This is one of the reasons for the success of the media's professional voice artists who have both the understanding and knowledge to be able to give the scripted words of informational or advertising messages the right style and delivery.

I dismay particularly when I hear enthusiastic Aboriginal performers rendering in English what are their own cultural songs with an American accent, not realising that they are pointing out unwittingly to us listeners that for them, form is the norm.

They copy what they believe to be the right expression for the enunciation of a song, as though they could portray their melody genuinely in 'language' with these American-style inflections. For those sonic strugglers - go back to Wirrawanka!

I have no argument with the proposition that English is a growing, changing language. For me that is a joyous premise, because our tongue is one which grew out of a large number of existing languages in its formative days – from Latin, German, French, Scandinavian, Indian, Arabic and many localised variants such as the span of Celtic and Gaelic tongues, and is still developing as new words find their way into our dialect..

But this should not mean that singers who are trying to ape the stylists should not know the true, the real, the fair dinkum way that words and phrases relate to how we Australians hear and accept their message.

There is also the other problem of new arrivals in our country struggling to learn or adopt English as a second language.

Like many languages, the way a word is sounded can affect its meaning. As an example, if you hear the word "bough" do you understand it to mean the branch of a tree or a curtsy? Similarly, consider the confusion for English learners in hearing the word "hot' pronounced as Americanised "hart".

I know I'd rather hear John Williamson singing "True Blue" in his unaffected, skilled Australian manner, than have some jumped up would-be-if-he-could-be render it stateside as: