AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

1) Historical background

Australia is a country, located in Oceania (n) between

the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific Ocean. It is the sixth
largest country in the world. It consists of six states, two major
mainland territories, and other minor territories. The states
are New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania,
Victoria and Western Australia. The two major mainland
territories are the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital
Territory. The capital is Canberra and the total population of the
country is almost 23 million people. The AusE is the official
language, but Greek, Chinese and Italian are also spoken.
Although London was the major influence during the creation of
AusE, and Ireland also had a strong influence in this language.
As said before, AusE was born because of the main influence of
London, this is because a group of convicts who lived there,
were transported to Australia during 1788. There are two
important aspects of London that make it had a strong
influence. First, many convicts from London came from the
same parts of London; becoming the dominant group overseas.
In addition, because of these pre-existing networks they would
have more chance of creating a community and maintaining
their variety. Next, there was a relatively high proportion of
young convicts who would be influential in creating a dialect
they would not only be the ones who started to create the new
dialect, but would also be the crucial link to the first native-born
generation.
2) Lexical Level
The Australian lexicon embodies the attitudes, values and self-perception of
Australians, and A widely recognized feature of the lexicon is its informality
Some words and expressions are quite naturally taken from British slang.
-drunk as a skunk
-Bludger A person who avoids working

Aggro: Aggressive.

Bikies: Motorcyclists

Dinkie die: The whole truth.

Knock: To criticise

Lolly: Money
Australians are renowned for their colloquial creativity, sometimes
generating sets of vulgar expressions built on a single stem: EG. ; Bullshit
artist one who tells lies; shit-faced drunk. The use of bastard in
aectionate phrases such as old bastard and silly bastard in AusE represents
that the more aectionate they feel towards someone, the more abusive
the language can be towards that person. A significant lexical development
in recent decades has been the borrowing of words and expressions such as
cookie, guy, and dude from American English. Linguists tend to regard
Australian borrowings from American English as selective due to research
shows that American English inuence on AusE has been only limited to the
lexical level.
In addition, a number of words in AusE have dierent meanings to
those ascribed in other varieties of English. For example:
AusE pants BrE trousers
- BrE trousers AusE underpants
- AusE vest BrE waistcoat
- BrE waistcoat AusE singlet
- AmE / BrE thong/gee string1 AusE flip flop
3) Phonological Level
There has been a tendency for the stress patterns in certain words to
move from a traditional British to an American pattern, for example
finANCE to FINance, reSEARCH to REsearch.
Three types of pronunciation have been identified:
- Cultivated: was noted to be the most prestigious (only spoken by
an 11% of the population)
- General: was used by the majority (55% of the population)
- Broad: has the least prestige but it is spoken by a 33% of the
population
An intonational variable is the so called Australian Questioning
Intonation, that is the use of a high rising tone used in declarative
rather than in interrogative clauses. The AQI primary linguistic
function is to seek verification of the listeners comprehension.
There are also regional phonological dierences, for example the
variation between // and /a:/. Places such as Sydney settled by
people of lower socioeconomic status, use more /a:/; Melbourne, with
a more mixed population has a higher proportion of //, and finally,
Adelaide, which was settled by people of middle or higher socioeconomic status, uses /a:/. Variants of /r/ final words (such as near
and cure) are used more in casual speech by lower socioeconomic
1 Type of thong underwear or swimsuit, a narrow piece of cloth, leather,
or plastic, that covers or holds the genitals, passes between the buttocks, and is
attached to a band around the hips

class speakers and by males.

Another characteristic of males who belong to lower socioeconomic
class is the palatalization of the phonemes /t/, /d/, /s/ and /z/ when
they occur before /u/ in words such as assume /sjum/ they change
them into /um/
Another examples are: schedule /edjul/ they pronounce it skedjul/.
Address with the stress on the first syllable. Words ending in ing (for
example running) tend to be pronounced with final // by women and
men tend to avoid that // sound, pronouncing it /rnn/. And words
ending in thing, are often pronounced /ennk/ instead of /en/

4) Morphosyntactic Level
Australian English speakers tend to use the present perfect in past
time context, where it indicates narrative progression and either
occurs with a definite past-referring adverbial, for example He walked
up to her and then he has pushed her off the chair. They also use the
negative auxiliary dont for standard doesnt (for example it dont fit
our plan). Sometimes, they drop of the perfect auxiliary have (for
example I only been there a couple of times). And they use double
negatives, as we do in Spanish (for example I never said nothing). The
most distinctive morphological feature of AusE is the productivity of
hypocoristic suffixation. There are two classes of hypocoristic
suffixation, the first one is with ie, commonly used in proper names
of people, for example Warnie to the cricketer Shane Warne, places,
for example Tassie Tasmania, Bankie Bankstown (suburb of
Sydney) and sport teams, for example Swannies the Sydney Swans
(Australian football club). And the second one with o, mainly used for
mens names, for example Davo David and occupational terms, for
example Journo journalist.
The ie forms generally denote aection, familiarity and solidarity, the
o forms denote roughness and anti-intellectualism.
The Australian penchant for hypocoristic also extends to other
derivational types: for example the reduction to the first syllable of a
word as in Oz Australia and Crim criminal or adding a final s to
proper names, for example Jules Julie
5) Pragmatic Level
A discourse usage that comes close to being distinctively Australian is
sentence-final but, as exemplified in [I used to be the Under-17
champion.] Im a bit out of practice but. A discourse marker which is
of relatively recent origins in AusE and which is not attested in other
Englishes, is yeah-no. As the following attested example
demonstrates, yeah-no is used where there is agreement yet the
speaker wishes to make a negative response to remove any
possibility of contradiction: hes a really good kid () he just comes

over and we spoil him rotten. Yeah-no hes a good kid ////// YEAH NO
operates to reinforce conversational solidarity on a number of levels
simultaneously.
Pragmatically, it softens the force of an utterance, enabling speakers
to hedge and maintain face.
Bloody: All-purpose intensifying adjective

Caaarn!: Traditional rallying cry at football games (contraction of

"Come on!").

Mate: This usually means a friend but it can be used to talk about to
anyone - even a total stranger.

Noise o: Speak loudly

. Jingoes!: Exclamation of wonder.

Q: Thank you

Shove o!: Go away!