Australian English

Australian English (AusE, AuE, AusEng, en-AU^[1]) is a major variety of the English language and is used throughout Australia. Although English has no official status in the Constitution, Australian English is Australia's de facto official language and is the first language of the majority of the population.

Australian English started diverging from British English after the founding of the colony of New South Wales in 1788 and was recognised as being different from British English by 1820. It arose from the intermingling of children of early settlers from a great variety of mutually intelligible dialectal regions of theBritish Isles and quickly developed into a distinct variety of English.^[2]

Australian English differs from other varieties of English in vocabulary, accent, pronunciation, register, grammar and spelling.

Phonology and Pronunciation [edit]

The primary way in which Australian English is distinctive from other varieties of English is through its unique pronunciation. It shares most similarity with other Southern Hemisphere accents, in particular New Zealand English.^[8] Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.^[9]

Vowels [edit]

 

Australian English monophthongs^[10]

 

Australian English diphthongs^[11]

The vowels of Australian English can be divided according to length. The long vowels, which include monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to the tense vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centring diphthongs. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, correspond to the RP lax vowels. There exist pairs of long and short vowels with overlapping vowel quality giving Australian Englishphonemic length distinction, which is unusual amongst the various dialects of English, though not unknown elsewhere, such as in regional south-eastern dialects of the UK and eastern seaboard dialects in the US.^[12] As with General American and New Zealand English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed /ɪ/ (sometimes written as /ɨ/ or /ᵻ/) is merged into /ə/ (schwa).

short vowels	long vowels
monophthongs		diphthongs
IPA examples ʊ foot, hood, chook ɪ kit, bid, hid, e dress, led, head ə comma, about, winter æ trap, lad, had a strut, bud, hud ɔ lot, cloth, hot	IPA examples ʉː goose, boo, who’d iː fleece, bead, heat eː square, bared, haired ɜː nurse, bird, heard æː bag, tan, bad[nb 1] aː start, palm, bath[nb 2] oː thought, north, force[nb 3]	IPA examples ʊə cure, lure, tour[nb 4] ɪə near, beard, hear[nb 5] æɔ mouth, bowed, how’d əʉ goat, bode, hoed[nb 6] æɪ face, bait, hade ɑe price, bite, hide oɪ choice, boy, oil

Consonants [edit]

There is little variation with respect to the sets of consonants used in various English dialects. There are, however, variations in how these consonants are used. Australian English is no exception.

Consonant phonemes of Australian English

Bilabial

Labio-  dental

Dental

Alveolar

Post-  alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Nasal

m

n

ŋ

Plosive

p

b

t

d

k

ɡ

Affricate

tʃ

dʒ

Fricative

f

v

θ

ð

s

z

ʃ

ʒ

h

Approximant

r

j

w

Lateral

l

Australian English is non-rhotic; in other words, the /r/ sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. However, a linking /r/ can occur when a word that has a final <r> in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive /r/ may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have <r> in the spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel /o:/ and after word final /ə/.

There is some degree of allophonic variation in the alveolar stops. As with North American English, Intervocalic alveolar flapping is a feature of Australian English: prevocalic /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar tap [ɾ] after sonorants other than /ŋ/, /m/as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel in the same breath group. For some speakers /t/ in final or in medial position isglottalised to [ʔ]. For many speakers, /t/ and /d/ in the combinations /tr/-/tw/ and /dr/-/dw/ are also palatalised, thus /tʃr/-/tʃw/ and /dʒr/-/dʒw/, as Australian /r/ is only very slightly retroflex, the tip remaining below the level of the bottom teeth in the same position as for /w/; it is also somewhat rounded ("to say 'r' the way Australians do you need to say 'w' at the same time"), where older English /wr/ and /r/ have fallen together as /ʷr/. The wine–whine merger is complete in Australian English.

Yod-dropping occurs after /r/, /l/, /s/, /z/, /θ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /j/ and /ɹ/, . Other cases of /sj/ and /zj/, along with /tj/ and /dj/, have coalesced to /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively for many speakers. /j/ is generally retained in other consonant clusters.

Pronunciation [edit]

Differences in stress, weak forms and standard pronunciation of isolated words occur between Australian English and other forms of English, which while noticeable do not impair intelligibility.

The affixes ary, ery, ory, bury, berry and mony (seen in words such as necessary, mulberry and matrimony) can be pronounced either with a full vowel or a schwa. Although some words likenecessary are almost universally pronounced with the full vowel, older generations of Australians are relatively likely to pronounce these affixes with a schwa while younger generations are relatively likely to use a full vowel.

Words ending in unstressed -ile derived from Latin adjectives ending in -ilis are pronounced with a full vowel (/ɑel/), so that fertile rhymes with fur tile rather than turtle.

In addition, miscellaneous pronunciation differences exist when compared with other varieties of English in relation to seemingly random words. For example, the vowel in yoghurt is pronounced as /əʉ/ ("long 'O'") rather than /ɔ/ ("short o"). Similarly, vitamin is pronounced with /ɑe/ ("long 'I'") in the first syllable, rather than /ɪ/ ("short 'I'"). Despite this, advertisement is pronounced with /ɪ/.Brooch is pronounced with /əʉ/ as opposed to /ʉː/, and Anthony with /θ/ rather than /t/.

Variation [edit]

Academic research has shown that the most notable variation within Australian English is largely sociocultural. This is mostly evident in phonology, which is divided into three sociocultural varieties: broad, general and cultivated.^[14]

A limited range of word choices is strongly regional in nature. Consequently, the geographical background of individuals can be inferred, if they use words that are peculiar to particular Australian states or territories and, in some cases, even smaller regions.

In addition, some Australians speak creole languages derived from Australian English, such as Australian Kriol, Torres Strait Creole and Norfuk.