94-508: Australian English is relatively homogeneous when compared with British and American English. The major varieties of Australian English are sociocultural rather than regional. They are divided into 3 main categories: general, broad and cultivated. There are a number of Australian English-based creole languages . Differing significantly from English, these are not considered dialects of English; rather, they are considered separate languages. Notable examples are Torres Strait Creole , spoken on
188-466: A lingua franca . Children from these communities disseminated English features throughout their communities. Although the relations between the missionaries and Aboriginal people were friendly, the missionaries were not responsible for the development of Kriol. In fact, they tried to introduce Standard English as the official language for the mission, which the Aboriginal children used in class and with
282-512: A stroller is usually called a pram in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales, and Tasmania. Preference for some synonymous words also differ between states. Garbage (i.e., garbage bin, garbage truck) dominates over rubbish in New South Wales and Queensland, while rubbish is more popular in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. Additionally,
376-406: A "dinky-di Aussie" is a "true Australian". Australian poetry , such as " The Man from Snowy River ", as well as folk songs such as " Waltzing Matilda ", contain many historical Australian words and phrases that are understood by Australians even though some are not in common usage today. Australian English, in common with British English , uses the word mate to mean friend , as well as
470-678: A betting wing of the NSW TAB . For many Australians, the verb barrack (or the accompanying noun form barracker ), is used to denote following a team or club. Barrack has its origins in British English, although in the UK it now usually means to jeer or denigrate an opposing team or players. The expression "root (or rooting) for a team", as used in the United States, is not generally used in Australia ( root
564-468: A continuum, from forms close to Standard Australian English to more non-standard forms. There are distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use. The dialect is not to be confused with Australian Kriol language , which is not mutually intelligible with Australian English but in fact a separate language spoken by over 30,000 people. On the Torres Strait Islands ,
658-492: A continuum, reflecting variations in accent. They can, but do not always, reflect the social class, education and urban or rural background of the speaker. Broad Australian English is recognisable and familiar to English speakers around the world. It is prevalent nationwide but is especially common in rural areas. Examples of people with this accent include Steve Irwin , Paul Hogan and former prime ministers Julia Gillard , Bob Hawke and John Howard . In Australia, this dialect
752-476: A distinctive dialect known as Torres Strait English , the furthest extent of which is Torres Strait Creole , is spoken. The ethnocultural dialects are diverse accents in Australian English that are spoken by the minority groups, which are of non-English speaking background. A massive immigration from Asia has made a large increase in diversity and the will for people to show their cultural identity within
846-507: A full vowel ( /ˈnesəseɹiː, ˈmalbeɹiː, ˈmætɹəməʉniː/ ) or a schwa ( /ˈnesəsəɹiː, ˈmalbəɹiː, ˈmætɹəməniː/ ). 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
940-415: A full vowel, so that fertile /ˈfɜːtɑɪl/ sounds like fur tile rather than rhyming with turtle /ˈtɜːtəl/ . 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: Relative to many other national dialect groupings, Australian English
1034-477: A fully backed allophone of /ʉː/ , transcribed [ʊː] , is common before /l/ . As a result, the pairs full/fool and pull/pool differ phonetically only in vowel length for those speakers. The usual allophone for /ʉː/ is further forward in Queensland and New South Wales than Victoria. The General Australian accent serves as the standard variety of English across the country. According to linguists, it emerged during
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#17328631816081128-596: A game of Australian rules football with a ball up , Western Australians with a bounce down ; New South Wales people and Queenslanders start a game of rugby league football or rugby union football with a kick off , as do soccer players across Australia. From 2004, the national governing body for Association football, (the Football Federation Australia ), has promoted the use of "football" in place of "soccer". Several media outlets have adopted this use, while others have stuck with "soccer". However, use of
1222-509: A greater tendency to exhibit pervasive nasality. Diphthongs are usually pronounced longer as well. Along the East Coast, there is an approximate correlation between latitude and accent, being the further north one is, the more nasal/broad the accent. Nasality is already evident at the New South Wales / Queensland border. General Australian English is the most common of Australian accents. It
1316-476: A more divergent phonology. Less divergent dialects, referred to as Light Kriol, have more English suffixes, a less divergent phonology, and more English words as opposed to Aboriginal ones. Kriol is very widely spoken in the Katherine area, but there are minor differences between the varieties of Kriol spoken in particular areas. Some speakers of Kriol prefer to refer to their language by their unique name. However,
1410-466: A new dialect of Australian English. It is generally spoken by Australian speakers of Lebanese descent . Closely resembling the general Australian accent, the variety was based on the acoustic phonetic characteristics in the speech of young, Lebanese Australian male university students in Sydney, who speak English as their first language and also use vernacular Arabic. Compared to the standard Australian English,
1504-404: A pejorative word for males who assert themselves aggressively - a type of person obsessed with grabbing girls' attention, "hotted-up" (meaning modified or hot-rodded) cars and loud music. wallah is also used, meaning "I swear to God" or "Really!" Although relatively homogeneous, some regional variations in Australian English are notable. The dialects of English spoken in the eastern states, where
1598-556: A range of forms which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and are said to vary along a continuum, from forms close to Standard Australian English to more non-standard forms. There are distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use. Academics have noted the emergence of numerous ethnocultural dialects of Australian English that are spoken by people from some minority non-English speaking backgrounds. These ethnocultural varieties contain features of General Australian English as adopted by
1692-927: A stream or small river, whereas in the UK it is typically a watercourse in a marshy area; paddock in Australia means field, whereas in the UK it means a small enclosure for livestock; bush or scrub in Australia, as in North America, means a natural, uncultivated area of vegetation or flora, whereas in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs ). Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been adopted by Australian English —mainly as names for places, flora and fauna (for example dingo ) and local culture. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as kangaroo , boomerang , budgerigar , wallaby and so on have become international. Other examples are cooee and hard yakka . The former
1786-552: A typical consonant articulation. When /l/ occurs at the ends of words before pauses and before other consonants, the consonantal articulation can be obscured by the vowel articulation. This makes the /l/ sound like /ʊ/ . The tendency for some /l/ sounds to become vowels is more common in South Australian English than that of other states. Milk , for example, in South Australia has a vocalised /l/ , leading to
1880-434: Is analytic , with words generally having only one form and additional meaning derived not from changing words but from word order and added new words. Kriol uses an SVO word order exclusively. In Kriol the order of possessor and possessum varies, with it being evenly split between possessor possessum and possessum possessor. In Kriol word order is evenly split between verb object adverb and Adverb verb object. Word order
1974-571: Is togs . In border areas such as the Tweed Heads - Gold Coast area this can vary. In most other areas, the term bathers dominates. What is referred to by schoolchildren as a bag in most parts of Australia is known as a "port" by some Queenslanders. Further, the processed meat known as "devon" on the East Coast is known as "polony" on the West Coast, while in Central Australia (South Australia and
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#17328631816082068-449: Is also understood. Australian English has adopted and adapted words from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, often for place names (eg: Canberra , Wollongong , Geelong ) or the names of animals (eg: kangaroo , kookaburra , barramundi ) and plants (eg: waratah , kurrajong ). A notable borrowing is "hard yakka" meaning hard work (from Yagara "yaga" meaning work). There exists significant regional variation in terms of
2162-542: Is also within the General Australian range, as the ongliding of /iː/ is variable. Speakers with a Cultivated Australian accent include Cate Blanchett , Lisa Gerrard , Geoffrey Rush and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser . Australian Aboriginal English refers to a dialect of Australian English used by a large proportion of Indigenous Australians. It is made up of a range of forms which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and are said to vary along
2256-495: Is an English-based creole language that developed from a pidgin used initially in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales , Australia, in the early days of European colonisation . Later, it was spoken by groups further west and north. The pidgin died out in most parts of the country, except in the Northern Territory , where the contact between European settlers, Chinese people and other Asian groups, and
2350-639: Is another Creole language called Light Warlpiri formed by rapid code-switching between Kriol, English, and Warlpiri by the inhabitants of the town of Lajamanu . The primary contributing language of Kriol is English, but it has received and continues to receive influence from Chinese Pidgin English , Alawa , Marra , Ngalakgan , Wandarrang , Mangarrayi , Ngandi , Nunggubuyu , Jawoyn , Dalabon , Rembarrnga , Barunga , Jaminjung , Ngarinyman , Wardaman , Walmatjari , Djaru , Miriwoong , and Gija . The Kriol language, unlike many other aboriginal languages,
2444-1097: Is based on the English alphabet , but varies not only in what letters and digraphs are used, but also in the rules for said letters and digraphs. Each phoneme in Kriol can only be made with one letter, unlike in English orthography , where several different spellings can be used to make the same sound. Kriol, unlike English, also uses a phonetic orthography in which words are spelled to match how they sound. The Kriol alphabet contains 21 letters: 11 consonant digraphs , 5 vowel digraphs and 5 punctuation marks . Letters : A , B , D , E , F , G , H , I , J , K , L , M , N , O , Q , R , S , T , U , W , Y Consonant Digraphs : Ly , Ng , Ny , Rd , Rl , Rn , Rr , Rt , Sh , Th , Tj Vowel Digraphs : Ai , Au , Ei , Oi , Ou Punctuation Marks : Period (.), Comma (,), Question mark (?), Exclamation mark (!), Quotation marks (" ") Dialects of Kriol include Roper River Kriol (Roper River Pidgin), Bamyili Creole (from
2538-675: Is especially prominent in urban Australia and is used as a standard language for Australian films, television programs and advertising. It is used by Hugh Jackman , Rose Byrne , Rebel Wilson , Chris Hemsworth and Eric Bana . Cultivated Australian English has in the past been perceived as indicating high social class or education. Additionally, a study in 1989 reported that Cultivated Australian English speakers were being rated higher than Broad Australian English speakers in intelligence, competence, reliability, honesty, and status. In comparison, Broad Australian English speakers are rated higher in terms of humorousness and talkativity, similar to what
2632-402: Is found across the continent and is relatively more prominent in rural and outer-suburban areas. A largely historical Cultivated sociocultural variant, which adopted features of British Received Pronunciation and which was commonplace in official media during the early 20th century, had become largely extinct by the onset of the 21st century. Australian Aboriginal English is made up of
2726-683: Is generally retained in other consonant clusters . In common with most varieties of Scottish English and American English , the phoneme /l/ is pronounced by Australians as a "dark" (velarised) l ( [ɫ] ) in almost all positions, unlike other dialects such as Received Pronunciation , Hiberno (Irish) English , etc. 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
2820-552: Is healthy, with most of its speakers under the age of 30. 99% of Kriol speakers are Australian Aboriginals, with only 0.8% being part of other groups. This shows that Kriol is an insider language only used within a community. Kriol speakers mainly use the language orally, with low literacy rates, though there are groups and initiatives working to increase the usage of Kriol literacy and usage in media by teaching Kriol literacy, creating new works in Kriol, and translating preexisting works into Kriol. There are various views and opinions on
2914-450: Is in vocabulary where regional varieties are most distinct from each other. Regional phonological features may be inherited due to differing settlement patterns or may have developed locally. There are differences in the names of beer glasses from one area to another. In the 2000s, however, the range of glass sizes in actual use has been greatly reduced. In New South Wales, swimwear is known as swimmers or cossie and, in Queensland, it
Variation in Australian English - Misplaced Pages Continue
3008-516: Is mostly evident in phonology. Although Australian English is relatively homogeneous, there are some regional variations. The dialects of English spoken in the various states and territories of Australia differ slightly in vocabulary and phonology. Most regional differences are in word usage. Swimming clothes are known as cossies , /ˈkɔziːz/ togs or swimmers in New South Wales, togs in Queensland, and bathers in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. What Queensland calls
3102-454: Is no exception. Australian English is uniformly non-rhotic ; that is, the /ɹ/ sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. As with many non-rhotic dialects, linking /ɹ/ can occur when a word that has a final ⟨r⟩ in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive /ɹ/ may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have ⟨r⟩ in
3196-479: 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. The earliest Australian English was spoken by the first generation of native-born colonists in the Colony of New South Wales from
3290-636: 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 variation within Australian English, which
3384-469: Is slang for sexual intercourse in Australia). There are many regional variations for describing social classes or subcultures . A bogan is also referred to as a bevan in Queensland. These variations, however, have almost completely been replaced by the term bogan . Tasmania sometime uses the terms Chigger and Ravo, derived from the low-socioeconomic suburbs of Chigwell and Ravenswood , though bogan
3478-500: Is sometimes called Strine /ˈstɹɑɪn/ (or "Strayan" /ˈstɹæɪən/ , a shortening of the word Australian ), and a speaker of the dialect may be referred to as an Ocker . Tests indicated that the Broad speakers demonstrated a greater tendency for syllable assimilation and consonant elision , were more likely to use weak consonants or restricted intonation (narrow pitch range), were more likely to speak slowly ( drawl ), and further, showed
3572-601: Is sometimes omitted in broader Australian English. For instance, "really good" can become "real good". Australia's switch to the metric system in the 1970s changed most of the country's vocabulary of measurement from imperial to metric measures. Since the switch to metric, heights of individuals are listed in centimetres on official documents and distances by road on signs are listed in terms of kilometres and metres . Australian Kriol language Australian Kriol , also known as Roper River Kriol, Fitzroy Valley Kriol, Northern Australian Creole or Aboriginal English ,
3666-552: 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 British settlement , being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians . 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
3760-502: Is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, (pronounced /ˈkʉːiː/ ) which travels long distances. Cooee is also a notional distance: "if he's within cooee , we'll spot him". Hard yakka means "hard work" and is derived from yakka , from the Jagera /Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region. The word bung , meaning "dead" was originally a Yagara word which was used in
3854-757: Is used over inflections or subject object affixation or verbs to specify meaning. Kriol pronouns differentiate between different between first , second and third person , as well as between singular, plural , and dual plural inclusive and exclusive pronouns first person. The language also differentiates between subject , object , independent pronoun, and adnominal possessive . There are also reflexive and reciprocal pronouns . In Australian Kriol, many spatial words from English have been transformed into suffixes attached to verbs they interact with. The specific suffixes vary between dialects but remain mostly similar. Austral Kriol also has 5 dipthongs : /ei/, /ai/, /ou/, /oi/, and /au/. The Kriol alphabet
Variation in Australian English - Misplaced Pages Continue
3948-493: The Aboriginal Australians in the northern regions has maintained a vibrant use of the language, which is spoken by about 30,000 people. Despite its similarities to English in vocabulary, it has a distinct syntactic structure and grammar. It is a language in its own right and is distinct from Torres Strait Creole . The first records of the progenitor to Kriol, a pidgin called Port Jackson Pidgin English, are found from
4042-578: The Barunga area), Barkly Kriol, Fitzroy Valley Kriol, and Daly River Kriol. Of the various dialects, those spoken in the Roper River and Barunga area are best documented. Kriol also varies on an acrolectic spectrum of dialects that are more similar to Australian Aboriginal English and those that differ more from it. More divergent dialects, referred to as Heavy Kriol, have more words from Australian Aboriginal languages as well as more divergent word order and
4136-705: 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
4230-477: The Green woodpecker . The Norfolk dialect word "rummum" (strange, odd person) has become "rum'un" (a scallywag, eccentric character). Many regional variations are due to Australians' passion for sport and the differences in non-linguistic traditions from one state to another: the word football refers to the most popular code of football in different States or regions, or even ethnic groups within them. Victorians start
4324-502: The Torres Strait Islands , Northern Cape York and South-Western Coastal Papua; the Norfuk language , spoken by some inhabitants of Norfolk Island , and Australian Kriol , which developed in and around the Sydney region in the days of early settlement, and now exists only in rural areas of the Northern Territory . Three main varieties of Australian English are spoken according to linguists: broad , general and cultivated . They are part of
4418-482: The grammar of the language. Not all speakers of NTPE would switch over though as many after 1908 continued to speak NTPE. It creolized first in the Roper River Mission ( Ngukurr ), where cattle stations were established and a township developed. During that period, relations between the native Australians and Europeans were strained and often violent. Aboriginal people fiercely defended their lands. However,
4512-811: The pidgin widely spoken across Australia. Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also been influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra , named after a local Ngunnawal language word thought to mean "women's breasts" or "meeting place". Litotes , such as "not bad", "not much" and "you're not wrong", are also used. Diminutives and hypocorisms are common and are often used to indicate familiarity. Some common examples are arvo (afternoon), barbie (barbecue), smoko (cigarette break), Aussie (Australian) and Straya (Australia). This may also be done with people's names to create nicknames (other English speaking countries create similar diminutives ). For example, "Gazza" from Gary, or "Smitty" from John Smith. The use of
4606-471: 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
4700-410: The 1780s, with the pidgin being used for communication between the white settlers around Port Jackson and the local indigenous population. European settlement in the Northern Territory was attempted over a period of about forty years. Settlement finally succeeded in 1870 with the founding of Darwin , and an influx of both English and Chinese speakers followed. To communicate between both groups and
4794-515: The 19th century. General Australian is the dominant variety across the continent, and is particularly so in urban areas. The increasing dominance of General Australian reflects its prominence on radio and television since the latter half of the 20th century. Recent generations have seen a comparatively smaller proportion of the population speaking with the Broad sociocultural variant, which differs from General Australian in its phonology. The Broad variant
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#17328631816084888-473: 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
4982-621: The Australian context. These ethnocultural varieties contain features of General Australian English as adopted by the children of immigrants blended with some non-English language features, such as the Afro-Asiatic and Asian languages . From the 1960s and 1970s, major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne received large numbers of immigrants from Southern Europe and the Middle East (Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Maltese, Croats, Macedonians, Turks etc.);
5076-445: The Kriol language. Some deny that it is even its own language, simply referring to it as English or insisting those who speak Kriol are just speaking English poorly. Others view the language as a threat because it encroaches on other older aboriginal languages, while some take pride in it and try to support it. Government support for Kriol is limited, with there being only two bilingual language programs in Barunga and Ngukurr ; though
5170-537: The Northern Territory), the term "fritz" is used. Tasmania uses the term "belgium" for the same product. Tasmanian English features numerous deviations from mainland vocabulary, including "cordial" to refer to carbonated soft drink. Tasmanian vocabulary also retains words from historic English dialects that have otherwise gone extinct - such as Jerry (fog), nointer (a mischievous child), and yaffler (a loud mouthed, obnoxious person), derived from an archaic word for
5264-674: The US. An example of this feature is the distinction between ferry /ˈfeɹiː/ and fairy /ˈfeːɹiː/ . As with New Zealand English and General American English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed /ɪ/ is merged into /ə/ ( 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
5358-502: The both prominent codes, rugby league and Australian rules football, interchangeably, depending on context of usage outside of regional perrameters. In some pockets of Melbourne & Western Sydney "football" and more rarely "footy" will refer to Association football although unlike more common international terminology, Australian English uses the term soccer and not football or footy. Beer glasses are also named differently in different states. Distinctive grammatical patterns exist such as
5452-603: The children of immigrants blended with some non-English language features, such as Afro-Asiatic languages and languages of Asia . Samoan English is also influencing Australian English. Other ethnolects include those of Lebanese and Vietnamese Australians. A high rising terminal in Australian English was noted and studied earlier than in other varieties of English. The feature is sometimes called Australian questioning intonation . Research published in 1986, regarding vernacular speech in Sydney , suggested that high rising terminal
5546-425: 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
5640-441: The control of lands was eventually seized by the settlers when a cattle company acquired much of the area. The settlers became more determined to take full control of the land from the native people and carried out a campaign to do so. The resettlements and land seizures that nearly annihilated the indigenous population were major factors in the development of the creole, as they created drastic social change. Another factor in
5734-528: The country.. In parts of Victoria and South Australia, castle rhymes with hassle rather than parcel . Also, some may use /æː/ in grasp , gasp , plaque and rasp . The table below, based on Crystal (1995) , shows the percentage of speakers from different capital cities who pronounce words with /aː/ as opposed to /æ/ . In Western Australian English , the centring diphthong vowels in near and square are typically realised as full diphthongs, [iə] or [ia] and [eə] or [ea] respectively, whereas in
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#17328631816085828-478: The development of Kriol was the establishment of a community of Anglican missionaries in the Roper River region in 1908. That brought together around 200 people from eight different aboriginal ethnic groups who spoke different native languages, although adult members of these groups were multilingual because of frequent meetings and ceremonies. Children from these groups were educated in English, necessitating use of
5922-423: The dialect. Internationally well-known examples of Australian terminology include outback , meaning a remote, sparsely populated area, the bush , meaning either a native forest or a country area in general, and g'day , a greeting. Dinkum , or fair dinkum means "true", "legitimate" or "is that true?", among other things, depending on context and inflection. The derivative dinky-di means "true" or devoted:
6016-427: The distinctive accent and vocabulary that had developed among the native-born colonists. 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
6110-512: The early colonists. A large proportion of early convicts and colonists were from Ireland, and spoke Irish as a sole or first language . They were joined by other non-native speakers of English from Scotland and Wales . 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
6204-404: The eastern states they may also be realised as monophthongs (without jaw movement), [iː] and [eː] respectively. When /l/ occurs at the ends of words before pauses and before consonants it sometimes sounds like a vowel sound rather than a consonant. This is because /l/ is made with two different articulations . One of the articulations is like a vowel articulation and the other is more like
6298-609: 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 /s/ , /l/ , /z/ , /θ/ but not after /t/ , /d/ and /n/ . Accordingly, suit is pronounced as /sʉːt/ , lute as /lʉːt/ , Zeus as /zʉːs/ and enthusiasm as /enˈθʉːziːæzəm/ . Other cases of /sj/ and /zj/ , as well as /tj/ and /dj/ , have coalesced to /ʃ/ , /ʒ/ , /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively for many speakers. /j/
6392-462: The end of the 18th century. These native-born children were exposed to a wide range of dialects from across the British Isles . Similar to early American English , the process of dialect levelling and koineisation which ensued produced a relatively homogeneous new variety of English which was easily understood by all. Peter Miller Cunningham 's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales described
6486-437: The extent to which the trap–bath split has taken hold particularly before /nd/ (especially the suffix -mand ), /ns/ , /nt/ , /ntʃ/ and /mpəl/ . In words like chance , plant , branch , sample and demand , the majority of Australians use /æː/ (as in bad ). Some, however, use /aː/ (as in cart ) in these words, particularly in South Australia, which had a different settlement chronology and type from other parts of
6580-400: 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" /aː/ of father . Throughout the majority of the country, the "flat" /æ/ of man is the dominant pronunciation for the a vowel in
6674-447: 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" /aː/ of father . 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
6768-502: The history of Australian English vocabulary and idiom. 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. The vowels of Australian English can be divided according to length. The long vowels, which include monophthongs and diphthongs , mostly correspond to
6862-405: The influx of American military personnel 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
6956-673: The language. There is also currently an Australian Kriol Misplaced Pages currently on the Wikimedia Incubator. On 5 May 2007, the first complete edition of the Bible in the Kriol language was launched at Katherine in the Northern Territory. Translation took over 29 years. It was undertaken by a team of native Kriol speakers led by Rev. Canon Gumbuli Wurrumara and specialists from the Society for Australian Indigenous Languages. The Kriol Bible
7050-403: The local Aboriginal people, pidgins developed throughout the territory based on Port Jackson Pidgin English (PJPE). By 1900, PJPE had developed into Northern Territory Pidgin English (NTPE), which was widespread and well understood. Then, by 1908, NTPE would creolize into Australian Kriol. This process of creolization entailed a massive increase in the lexicon as well as a complexification of
7144-754: The majority of the population lives, differ somewhat to those spoken in South Australia , Tasmania and Western Australia . Another notable dialect is Torres Strait English , spoken by the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands. Torres Strait English, as distinct from Torres Strait Creole, developed separately to, but has been significantly influenced by, General Australian English. The regional varieties of English can be distinguished in terms of vocabulary and phonology. With each local dialect taking words from various sources such as British, Irish and American English as well as local Aboriginal languages , it
7238-556: The missionaries, but Kriol still flourished. Kriol was not recognized as a language until the 1970s, as it was regarded as a dialect of English. In her first speech in April 2013, Josie Farrer spoke in both Kriol and Gija, marking the first ever use of an indigenous language in the Western Australian Parliament . As a general rule, the grammar of Kriol is a simplified version of that found in English , meaning that it
7332-476: The one in Barunga has closed, they both successfully included Kriol as both a medium and an object of study. Many famous pieces of media such Shakespeare and Waltzing Matilda have been translated into Kriol, and many books have been published in Kriol. ABC and several other organizations currently make news in Kriol. Online there are several videos and texts available in Kriol, as well as resources for learning
7426-503: The other states they may also be realised as monophthongs: [nɪː, skweː] . A feature common in Victorian English is salary–celery merger , whereby a Victorian pronunciation of Ellen may sound like Alan and Victoria's capital city Melbourne may sound like Malbourne to speakers from other states. There is also regional variation in /ʉː/ before /l/ (as in school and pool ). In some parts of Australia, notably Victoria,
7520-486: The other states. Accordingly, words such as dance , advance , plant , example and answer are pronounced with /aː/ (as in father ) far more frequently in South Australia while the older /æ/ (as in mad ) is dominant elsewhere in Australia. L -vocalisation is also more common in South Australia than other states. In Western Australian and Queensland English, the vowels in near and square are typically realised as centring diphthongs ( [nɪə, skweə] ), whereas in
7614-525: The pronunciation [mɪʊ̯k] , whereas in other states the /l/ is pronounced as a consonant. In Victoria, many speakers pronounce /æ/ and /e/ in a way that is distinct from speakers in other states. Many younger speakers from Victoria pronounce the first vowel in "celery" and "salary" the same, so that both words sound like "salary". These speakers will also tend to say "halicopter" instead of "helicopter", and pronounce their capital city ( Melbourne ) as [ˈmæɫbən] . For some older Victorian speakers,
7708-451: The second generation of these immigrants can also have a distinct accent, in a similar fashion to the east coast of the United States with descendants of European migrants having the " Jersey accent ". Chinese-Australian English has the all-purpose exclamation "aiyah!"/"aiyoh!" (what a shame! - from Mandarin / Cantonese ) and sometimes will end sentences with "lah" (from Singlish ). Lebanese Australian English (LAusE) has been prescribed as
7802-460: The spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel /oː/ and after word final /ə/ . 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 /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar tap [ɾ] after sonorants other than /m, ŋ/ as well as at
7896-472: The students had minor vowel motion differences with striking voicing and related timing effects. Other Middle Eastern Australians too, particularly in the Sydney area (in the 2006 census, 72.8% of Lebanese-Australians lived in Sydney) have a similar dialect. Among Arab Australians , words such as "shoo" (what's up) and "yallah" (let's go/goodbye). " Habib " has a use similar to mate (meaning friend), but can also be
7990-568: The suffix -o originates in Irish : ó , which is both a postclitic and a suffix with much the same meaning as in Australian English. In informal speech, incomplete comparisons are sometimes used, such as "sweet as" (as in "That car is sweet as."). "Full", "fully" or "heaps" may precede a word to act as an intensifier (as in "The waves at the beach were heaps good."). This was more common in regional Australia and South Australia but has been in common usage in urban Australia for decades. The suffix "-ly"
8084-412: The use of the interrogative eh (also spelled ay or aye ), which is particularly associated with Queensland. Secret Santa ( ) and Kris Kringle are used in all states, with the former being more common in Queensland. The most pronounced variation in phonology is between South Australia and the other states and territories. The trap–bath split is more complete in South Australia, in contrast to
8178-468: The varieties are quite similar. The differences are not actually that large. Mari Rhydwen compares the distinction to the distinction between American and British English . Roper River (Ngukurr) Kriol is also spoken in Barunga, and in the Daly River area, a mutually intelligible variety is spoken, but Daly River speakers do not consider themselves to be Kriol speakers. There is the question of whether
8272-451: The varieties should be understood as different forms of Kriol to strengthen the identities of the respective regions, or seen as Kriol and potentially have a better chance of funding for bilingual education programs. There is also a creole language based off a mix of Kriol and Gurindji called Gurndji Creole , which was formed by pervasive code switching between Kriol and Gurnidji by Gurnidji inhabitants of Victoria River District. There
8366-417: The word bloody as a mild expletive or intensifier . "Mate" is also used in multiple ways including to indicate "mateship" or formally call out the target of a threat or insult, depending on internation and context. Several words used by Australians were at one time used in the UK but have since fallen out of usage or changed in meaning there. For example, creek in Australia, as in North America, means
8460-403: The word footy generally refers to the most popular football code in an area; that is, rugby league or rugby union depending on the local area, in most of New South Wales and Queensland. More commonly "rugby" is used to distinguish rugby union from "footy" which refers to the more popular rugby league. Footy commonly is used for Australian rules football elsewhere however the term refers to
8554-616: The word "football" to mean either Australian football or rugby league , depending on the major code of the state, remains the standard usage in Australia. In all places, the specific name or nickname of the code ("soccer", "league", "union" or "Aussie rules") can often be heard used for disambiguation. The slang word footy has been traditionally associated with either Australian rules football (Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory) or rugby league football (New South Wales, Queensland). Prominent examples in popular culture are The Footy Show s; also FootyTAB,
8648-403: The words "celery" and "salary" also sound the same but instead both sound like "celery". These speakers will also pronounce words such as "alps" as "elps". The vowel in words like "pool", "school" and "fool" varies regionally. Australian English Australian English ( AusE , AusEng , AuE , AuEng , en-AU ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia . It
8742-505: Was found in a study in 1975 comparing regional British accents to RP (Received Pronunciation). Cultivated Australian English also has some similarities to Received Pronunciation and the Transatlantic accent as well. In recent generations, it has fallen sharply in usage. However, the cultivated usages of [ɛɪ] in "face" and [aɪ] "price" have been integrated into the speech of some of the speakers of General Australian. [ɪi] for FLEECE
8836-512: Was initially spread by young people in the 1960s. It found that the high rising terminal was used more than twice as often by young people than older people, and is more common among women than men. In the United Kingdom , it has occasionally been considered one of the variety's stereotypical features, and its spread there is attributed to the popularity of Australian soap operas . Australian English has many words and idioms which are unique to
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