Forget Scott Morrison’s attempt to crank up the culture wars issue over Australia Day: the real and concerning issue has to do with pronunciation of the word "Australia" itself.

Not since the words terra Australis or terra Australis incognita (the unknown southland) was converted by the explorer Matthew Flinders to "Australia" back in 1804 (later accepted by the British Admiralty in 1824) have we faced such confusion over our name.

What’s in a name, you might ask? But when it’s the name of your country, your identity, your brand, your birthright, a standard pronunciation would seem to be desirable.

After all, Americans, whether from south or north, east of west, reproduce a more or less standard version of Amairicuh with emphasis on the vowels "e" and "a". These become "air" and "uh", thus investing the word with a resonance, even reverence.

Singing of the American national anthem – Amairicuh, Amairicuh – conveys a certain self-belief.

On the other hand, Advance Australia Fair (or its variations) leaves you wondering whether you’ve chanced upon a Qantas advertisement ("girt by sea").

You might hope, even expect, the country’s political class would provide leadership in the matter of a more settled version of Australia. If they can’t put the country on a steady course politically, as did James Cook in his voyage of discovery, to what he called New Holland, at least they should be relied upon to produce a relatively standardised version of the country’s name.

Has there ever been a generation of Australian politicians whose speech patterns are lazier, sloppier and more atonal? Beyond the pronunciation of Australia there is a problem with Australian English more generally, for which the ABC as the arbiter of acceptable usage and abusage must accept some responsibility.

But first to Osstralia, or Orestralia, or Orstralia, or Oztralia, or Awstralia, or Ozstraya, or, simply, Stralia or 'Straya.

We don’t have to travel far to identify the culprits.

Morrison finds himself marooned somewhere between Austraya and 'Straya, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg makes a strangled noise that sounds closer to 'Straya, and the less said the better about Bill Shorten’s falling inflection rendition of 'Straya.

Julia Gillard, whose nasal version of Australian English offended some (not me), did a better job enunciating the name of the country than her latter-day successors.

This excuses Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, all of whom managed to articulate the word without sounding like a sheep about to enter the marking pen.

It is hard to know when the rot set in, but we’ve been heading in this direction for quite a long time. What might be regarded as standard Australian English is being de-standardised, certainly Americanised.

What then does the ABC have to say on the subject of the valid pronunciation of Australia in time for Australia Day in the hope of providing guidance to those who will be required to utter the word formally.

In quest for answers I turned to Tiger Webb, researcher with the ABC Language unit and keeper of what we used to call in my day at the national broadcaster the "style book".

Then, Australia was, phonetically, as far as I can remember, a cross between Osstralia, or Oztralia or Orstralia to produce an amalgam of the three with a relatively soft, or reduced, emphasis on the or.

Then, we might have been steered away from writer Hal Porter’s version of Awstralia. As Porter put it: He was “an unmistakable Australian, albeit of the Awstralian rather than the Osstralian variety’’.

So, what today is the correct pronunciation, according to the ABC stylemaster, Tiger Webb?

Well, it appears that apart from the crude 'Straya or 'Stralia, both definitely no-no’s in ABC style, there is no hard and fast rule about pronunciation of the name of the country.

Something that distils the following – Orstralia, Orestralia, Oztralia, Osstralia, and Awstralia – would be fine, more or less.

"Variant pronunciations of the national word, or otherwise, are no more the result of concerted attempts to streamline language than they are of any grand modernist project," Webb says.

"It’s just variation which, on the historical evidence, has been part of Australian speech for longer than the country has existed."

That seems like a bit of a cop out. But there you go. If we’re confused about a lot of things these days, not least of them is how to pronounce the country’s name.