Australian English

Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language. While Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the ''de facto'' national language since the onset of British settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians in 2021. It is also the main language used in compulsory education, as well as federal, state and territorial legislatures and courts.

Australian English began to diverge from British and Hiberno-English after the First Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales in 1788. Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of South East England. By the 1820s, the native-born colonists' speech was recognisably distinct from speakers in Britain and Ireland.

Australian English differs from other varieties in its phonology, pronunciation, lexicon, idiom, grammar and spelling. Australian English is relatively consistent across the continent, although it encompasses numerous regional and sociocultural varieties. "General Australian" describes the ''de facto'' standard dialect, which is perceived to be free of pronounced regional or sociocultural markers and is often used in the media.

History

Similar to early American English, Australian English passed through a process of extensive dialect levelling and mixing which produced a relatively homogeneous new variety of English which was easily understood by all.

The earliest Australian English was spoken by the first generation of native-born colonists in the Colony of New South Wales from the end of the 18th century. These native-born children were exposed to a wide range of dialects from across the British Isles. The dialects of South East England, including most notably the traditional Cockney dialect of London, were particularly influential on the development of the new variety and constituted "the major input of the various sounds that went into constructing" Australian English. All the other regions of England were represented among the early colonists. A large proportion of early convicts and colonists were from Ireland (comprising the 25% of the total convict population), and many of them spoke Irish as a sole or first language. They were joined by other non-native speakers of English from the Scottish Highlands and Wales. Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book ''Two Years in New South Wales'' described the distinctive accent and vocabulary that had developed among the native-born colonists.

The first of the Australian gold rushes in the 1850s began a large wave of immigration, during which about two percent of the population of the United Kingdom emigrated to the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. The Gold Rushes brought immigrants and linguistic influences from many parts of the world. An example was the introduction of vocabulary from American English, including some terms later considered to be typically Australian, such as ''bushwhacker'' and ''squatter''. This American influence was continued with the popularity of American films from the early 20th century and the influx of American military personnel that settled in Australia and New Zealand during World War II; seen in the enduring persistence of such universally-accepted terms as ''okay'' and ''guys''.

The publication of Edward Ellis Morris's ''Austral English: A Dictionary Of Australasian Words, Phrases And Usages'' in 1898, which extensively catalogued Australian English vocabulary, started a wave of academic interest and codification during the 20th century which resulted in Australian English becoming established as an endonormative variety with its own internal norms and standards. This culminated in publications such as the 1981 first edition of the ''Macquarie Dictionary'', a major English language dictionary based on Australian usage, and the 1988 first edition of '' The Australian National Dictionary'', a historical dictionary documenting the history of Australian English vocabulary and idiom.

File:The First Fleet entering Port Jackson, January 26, 1788, drawn 1888 A9333001h.jpg, The First Fleet, which brought the English language to Australia
File:Doudiet Swearing allegiance to the Southern Cross.jpg, The Australian gold rushes saw many external influences on the language.

Phonology and pronunciation

The most obvious way in which Australian English is distinctive from other varieties of English is through its unique pronunciation. It shares most similarity with New Zealand English. Like most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by the phonetic quality of its vowels.

Vowels

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 English phonemic length distinction, which is also present in some regional south-eastern dialects of the UK and eastern seaboard dialects in the US. An example of this feature is the distinction between ''ferry'' and ''fairy'' .

As with New Zealand English and General American English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed is merged into ( schwa), unless it is followed by a velar consonant. Examples of this feature are the following pairings, which are pronounced identically in Australian English: ''Rosa's'' and ''roses'', as well as ''Lennon'' and ''Lenin''. Other examples are the following pairs, which rhyme in Australian English: ''abbott'' with ''rabbit'', and ''dig it'' with ''bigot''.

Most varieties of Australian English exhibit only a partial trap-bath split. The words ''bath'', ''grass'' and ''can't'' are always pronounced with the "long" of ''father''. Throughout the majority of the country, the "flat" of ''man'' is the dominant pronunciation for the ''a'' vowel in the following words: ''dance'', ''advance'', ''plant'', ''example'' and ''answer''. The exception is the state of South Australia, where a more advanced trap-bath split is found, and where the dominant pronunciation of all the preceding words incorporates the "long" of ''father''.

Consonants

There is little variation in the sets of consonants used in different English dialects but there are variations in how these consonants are used. Australian English is no exception.

Australian English is uniformly non-rhotic; that is, the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. As with many non-rhotic dialects, linking can occur when a word that has a final in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have in the spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel and after word final . This can be heard in "law-r-and order", where an intrusive R is voiced between the AW and the A.

As with North American English, intervocalic alveolar flapping is a feature of Australian English: prevocalic and surface as the alveolar tap after sonorants other than as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel in the same breath group. Examples of this feature are that the following pairs are pronounced similarly or identically: ''latter'' and ''ladder'', as well as ''rated'' and ''raided''.

''Yod''-dropping generally occurs after , , , but not after , and . Accordingly, ''suit'' is pronounced as , ''lute'' as , ''Zeus'' as and ''enthusiasm'' as . Other cases of and , as well as and , have coalesced to , , and respectively for many speakers. is generally retained in other consonant clusters.

In common with most varieties of Scottish English and American English, the phoneme is pronounced by Australians as a "dark" (velarised) ''l'' () in almost all positions, unlike other dialects such as Received Pronunciation, Hiberno (Irish) English, etc.

Pronunciation

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 like ''necessary'' are almost universally pronounced with the full vowel, older generations of Australians are relatively likely to pronounce these affixes with a schwa as is typical in British English. Meanwhile, 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, so that ''fertile'' sounds like ''fur tile'' rather than rhyming with ''turtle'' .

In addition, miscellaneous pronunciation differences exist when compared with other varieties of English in relation to various isolated words, with some of those pronunciations being unique to Australian English. For example:
* As with American English, the vowel in ''yoghurt'' and the prefix ''homo-'' (as in ''homosexual'' or ''homophobic'') are pronounced with rather than ;
* ''Vitamin'', ''migraine'' and ''privacy'' are all pronounced with in the stressed syllable () rather than ;
* ''Dynasty'' and ''patronise'', by contrast, are usually subject to trisyllabic laxing () like in Britain, alongside US-derived ;
* The prefix ''paedo-'' (as in ''paedophile'') is pronounced rather than ;
* In loanwords, the vowel spelled with is often nativized as the vowel (), similar to American English (), rather than the vowel (), as in British English. For example, ''pasta'' is pronounced , analogous to American English , rather than , as in British English.
* ''Urinal'' is stressed on the first syllable and with the schwa for ''I'': ;
* ''Harass'' and ''harassment'' are pronounced with the stress on the second, rather than the first syllable;
* The suffix ''-sia'' (as in ''Malaysia'', ''Indonesia'' and ''Polynesia'', but not ''Tunisia'') is pronounced rather than ;
* The word ''foyer'' is pronounced , rather than ;
* ''Tomato'', ''vase'' and ''data'' are pronounced with instead of : , with being uncommon but acceptable;
* ''Zebra'' and ''leisure'' are pronounced and rather than and , both having disyllabic laxing;
* ''Status'' varies between British-derived with the vowel and American-derived with the vowel;
* Conversely, ''precedence'', ''precedent'' and derivatives are mainly pronounced with the vowel in the stressed syllable, rather than : ;
* ''Basil'' is pronounced , rather than ;
* Conversely, ''cache'' is usually pronounced , rather than the more conventional ;
* ''Buoy'' is pronounced as (as in ''boy'') rather than ;
* The ''E'' in ''congress'' and ''progress'' is not reduced: ;
* Conversely, the unstressed ''O'' in ''silicon'', ''phenomenon'' and ''python'' stands for a schwa: ;
* In ''Amazon'', ''Lebanon'', ''marathon'' and ''pantheon'', however, the unstressed ''O'' stands for the vowel, somewhat as with American English: ;
* The colour name ''maroon'' is pronounced with the vowel: .

Variation

Relative to many other national dialect groupings, Australian English is relatively homogeneous across the country. Some relatively minor regional differences in pronunciation exist. A limited range of word choices is strongly regional in nature. Consequently, the geographical background of individuals may 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.

Academic research has also identified notable sociocultural

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