Had this big long reply all typed out and was about to copy it when the screen suddenly wiped out to the - this page is not available - screen. Grrrr. Been having quite a few problems like this lately. Not sure what is causing the problem.
Happy to reply to your post regarding accents etc, but first the flowers - the orchid is called Cattelya Pastoral White, but I call it Lemon and Lime. I bought it with some of the money the Canadians gave me for carting them around the other day. I call it the Canadian Orchid.
As to accents - well no one really minds when they are on holiday if someone comes bouncing up to them and asks them where they are from, but I'll try my best to sort out the differences for you.
First I have no accent - get it!!!! Since I am here and I speak both Aus and Kiwi and very few can pick me these days - I don't have an accent!!!
The English are (mainly) much more precise in their speech. They tend to pronounce things with t's & d's on the end much better than we do. Having said that, I can't understand the Liverpool accent very well. They tend to speak through the nose and say some very interesting things (I think!!!!) The English have so many accents in one small country, it's amazing. Linus will sound much different from Teel. The Edinburgh accent is soft and delightful as opposed to the Glasgow one (now linus is going to say that she is originally from Glasgow. The Irish sound different again.
Australian - sometimes known as strine - is very colloquial. The Aussie will state with total enthusiasm - He's a f****** stubby short of a f****** six pack, mate, whereas the Kiwi will say laconically - he's nucking futs! The English would probably say something like - I have some extreme doubts about the sanity of that gentleman.
The Australian tends to use the letter i as an e, the Kiwi as a u - for example six in Australian is closer to sex, whereas the kiwi is closer to sux.
The English can't often tell the difference either, except that if one is polite and says please and thank you they generally tend to ask if you are a New Zealander. However their usual question goes something like: I don't wish to be insulting, but are you a Kiwi or an Australian? They tend to look at a lot of the Australians as being loud mouthed and obnoxious, and therein lies the differences. No insult intended here, but the Australians tend to lean towards America, whereas the Kiwis tend to look back to Britain with nostalgia. I think it has something to do with the convict mentality.
I suppose we are in the same boat here as we can hardly tell the difference between the Canadians and Americans apart from the odd words which tell them apart. And then of course you have the South Africans whose accents are probably closer to Kiwi than Aus with a Dutch gutteral overlay.
Better go see if I can get this going again.