Australian English (AusE, AuE, AusEng, en-AU[1]) is the form of the English language as spoken in Australia.
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[edit] Socio-historical linguistic context
Australian English began diverging from British English shortly after the foundation of the Australian penal colony of New South Wales in 1788, and was already in development with the first generation of Australian-born children from European parents. Convicts sent to Australia came mostly from large English cities and included a significant proprtion of Cockneys from London[2]. They were joined by free settlers, military personnel and administrators, often with their families. However, a large part of the convict body were Irish, with at least 25% directly from Ireland, and others indirectly via Britain. There were other populations of convicts from non-English speaking areas of Britain, such as the Welsh and Scots. In 1827 Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians of the time — known as "currency lads and lasses"[3] — spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, different to any of their parents but with a strong Cockney influence. The distinctive accent continued to develop amongst the native born, even after transportation of convicts to Australia ended in 1868, as immigration of free settlers from Britain, Ireland and elsewhere continued.
The first of the Australian gold rushes, in the 1850s, began a much larger wave of immigration which would significantly influence the language. During the 1850s, when the UK was under economic hardship, about two per cent of its population emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales and the Colony of Victoria.[4]
Among the changes brought by the gold rushes was "Americanisation" of the language—the introduction of words, spellings, terms and usages from North American English. The words imported included some later considered to be typically Australian, such as dirt and digger.[5] Bonzer, which was once a common Australian slang word meaning "great", "superb" or "beautiful", is thought to have been a corruption of the American mining term bonanza,[6] which means a rich vein of gold or silver and is itself a loanword from Spanish. As the term was used interchangeably in the early twentieth century with the words boshter and bosker, the derivation from the Spanish 'bonanza' seems unlikely. The influx of American military personnel in World War II brought further American influence; though most words were short-lived;[5] and only okay, you guys and gee have persisted.[5]
Since the 1950s the American influence on language in Australia has mostly come from pop culture, the mass media (books, magazines and television programs), computer software and the internet. Some words, such as freeway and truck, have even been naturalised so completely that few Australians recognise their origin.[5] Some American, British and Australian variants exist side-by-side; in many cases – freeway and motorway (used in New South Wales) for instance – regional, social and ethnic variation within Australia typically defines word usage.[7]
One of the first writers to attempt renditions of Australian accents and vernacular was the novelist Joseph Furphy (a.k.a. Tom Collins), who wrote a popular account of rural New South Wales and Victoria during the 1880s, Such is Life (1903). C. J. Dennis wrote poems about working class life in Melbourne, such as The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915), which was extremely popular and was made into a popular silent film (The Sentimental Bloke; 1919). John O'Grady's novel They're a Weird Mob has many examples of pseudo-phonetically written Australian speech in Sydney during the 1950s, such as "owyergoinmateorright?" ("How are you going, mate? All right?"). Thomas Keneally's novels set in Australia, particularly The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, frequently use vernacular such as "yair" for "yes" and "noth-think" for "nothing".
One of the most influential books of Australian English is the satirical "Let Stalk Strine" by Afferbeck Lauder – where "Strine" is "Australian" and "Afferbeck Lauder" is "alphabetical order" . The book reduces the Australian tendency to shorten and run words together into virtual gibberish. For instance, the term 'Aorta' translates as 'They ought to' as in 'Aorta builda nuvver arber bridge. An aorta stop halfese cars from cummern inner city - so a feller can get twirkon time.' (They ought to build another harbour bridge, and they ought to stop half these cars from coming into the city, so a fellow can get to work on time)
To outsiders, Australian English seems most similar to New Zealand English. Both use the expression different to (also encountered in British English, but not American) as well as different from, though sometimes with a semantic difference (different to highlights the "closeness" or "neutrality" of the difference, while different from highlights the difference).
Words of Irish origin are used, some of which are also common elsewhere in the Irish diaspora, such as tucker for "food", "provisions" (Irish tacar),[citation needed] as well as one or two native English words whose meaning have changed under Irish influence,[citation needed] such as paddock for "field", cf. Irish páirc, which has exactly the same meaning as the Australian paddock.
Australia adopted decimal currency in 1966 and the metric system in the 1970s. This, too has affected Australian English.[8]
[edit] Variation and changes
Three main varieties of Australian English are spoken according to linguists: broad, general and cultivated.[9] They are part of a continuum, reflecting variations in accent. They often, but not always, reflect the social class or educational background of the speaker.[10]
Broad Australian English is recognisable and familiar to English speakers around the world because it is used to identify Australian characters in non-Australian films and television programmes (often in the somewhat artificial "stage" Australian English version). Examples are film/television personalities Steve Irwin and Paul Hogan. Slang terms ocker, for a speaker, and Strine, a shortening of the word Australian for the dialect, are used in Australia.
The majority of Australians speak with the general Australian accent. This predominates among modern Australian films and television programmes and is used by, for example, Eric Bana, Dannii Minogue and Hugh Jackman.
Cultivated Australian English has some similarities to British Received Pronunciation, and is often mistaken for it. Cultivated Australian English is spoken by some within Australian society, for example Cyril Ritchard, Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis.
There are no strong variations in accent and pronunciation across different states and territories. Regional differences in pronunciation and vocabulary are small in comparison to those of the British and American English, and Australian pronunciation is determined less by region than by social, cultural and educational influences. There is some subtle regional variation. In Tasmania and Queensland, words such as "dance" and "grant" are usually heard with the older pronunciation of these words, using [æː]. In South Australia [aː] is the norm. In other states both pronunciations can be heard. Some speakers in those areas where [æː]/[æ] is found prefer to use [aː] in such words as a sign of higher social class.[11] In words such as "pass", "can't", "last", all regional variants use [aː].
[edit] Phonology
Australian English is a non-rhotic accent and it is similar to the other Southern Hemisphere accents (New Zealand English and South African English).[12] Like most dialects of English it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.[13]
The vowels of Australian English can be divided into two categories: long and short vowels. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, mostly correspond to the lax vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation. The long vowels, consisting of both monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to its tense vowels and centring diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: that compresses, shortens or removes these features.[citation needed]
- Many speakers have also coalesced /dj/, /sj/ and /tj/ into /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /tʃ/, producing standard pronunciations such as [t͡ʃʰʉːn] for tune.
- t, dd and s in the combinations tr, dr and sr (this latter loan words only) also fall in with /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ for many speakers, and for all speakers in the case of sr in loan words, thus tree /tʃɹiː/, draw /dʒɹɔː/ and Sri Lanka /ʃɹiˈlæŋkə/.
- In colloquial speech intervocalic /t/ undergoes voicing and flapping to the alveolar tap [ɾ] after the stressed syllable and before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/, though not before syllabic /n/ (bottle vs button [batn]), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). In formal speech /t/ is retained. However, the alveolar flap is normally distinguishable by Australians from the intervocalic alveolar stop /d/, which is not flapped, thus ladder and latter, metal and medal, and coating and coding remain distinct; further, when coating becomes coatin' , the t remains voiceless, thus [kʌutn]. This is a quality that Australian English shares with some other varieties of English.
- Intervocalic /nt/ in fast speech can be realised as [n], another trait shared other varieties of English at the colloquial or dialect level, though in formal speech the full form /nt/ is retained. This makes winter and winner homophones in fast speech. 1999 was a great year for EFL teachers in Australia to illustrate this : "nineen-niny-nine".
[edit] Vocabulary
Australian English has many words that some consider unique to the language. One of the best known is outback, meaning a remote, sparsely populated area. Another is The Bush, meaning either a native forest or a country area in general. 'Bush' is a word of Dutch origin: 'Bosch'. However, both terms have been widely used in many English-speaking countries. Early settlers from England brought other similar words, phrases and usages to Australia. Many words used frequently by country Australians are, or were, also used in all or part of England, with variations in meaning. For example, creek in Australia, as in North America, means a stream or small river, whereas in the UK it means a small watercourse flowing into the sea; 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 wooded area, whereas in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs). Australian English and several British English dialects (for example, Cockney, Scouse, Glaswegian and Geordie) use the word mate.
The origins of other words are not as clear or are disputed. Dinkum (or "fair dinkum") can mean "true", "is that true?" or "this is the truth!” among other things, depending on context and inflection. It is often claimed that dinkum dates back to the Australian goldrushes of the 1850s, and that it is derived from the Cantonese (or Hokkien) ding kam, meaning, "top gold". But scholars give greater credence to the conjecture that it originated from the extinct East Midlands dialect in England, where dinkum (or dincum) meant "hard work" or "fair work", which was also the original meaning in Australian English.[14] The derivative dinky-di means 'true' or devoted: a 'dinky-di Aussie' is a 'true Australian'. However, this expression is limited to describing objects or actions that are characteristically Australian. The words dinkum or dinky-di and phrases like true blue are widely purported to be typical Australian sayings, even though they are more commonly used in jest or parody than as authentic slang.
Similarly, g'day, a stereotypical Australian greeting, is no longer synonymous with "good day" in other varieties of English and is never used as an expression for "farewell", as "good day" is in other countries. It is simply used as a greeting.
[edit] Influence of Australian Aboriginal languages
Some elements of Aboriginal languages and Torres Strait Island 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. Beyond that, little has been adopted into the wider language, except for some localised terms and slang. Some examples are cooee and hard yakka. The former is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, (pronounced /kʉː.iː/) 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 Yagara/Jagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region. Also from there is the word bung, from the Sydney pidgin English (and ultimately from the Sydney Aboriginal language), and originally meaning "dead", and now meaning "broken" or "caused to be less than perfect", such as "a bung knee", which is a knee that does not work properly for whatever reason, such as stiffness, pain, arthritis, an accident, or something like that. A failed piece of equipment may be described as having bunged up or as "on the bung" or "gone bung".
Although didgeridoo, referring to a well-known wooden musical instrument, is often thought of as an Aboriginal word, it is now believed to be an onomatopoeic word invented by English speakers. It has also been suggested that it may have an Irish or Scottish Gaelic derivation because the word dúdaire means "piper" in Gaelic, and dúdaire dubh [du:dɪrʲɪ du:] means 'black pipe player'.[15] Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also been influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The most well known example is the capital, Canberra named after a local language word meaning "meeting place".
[edit] Spelling
Australian spelling generally follows conventions of British English. As in British spelling, the 'u' is retained in words such as honour and favour and the -ise ending is used in words such as organise and realise, although -ize may be tolerated, and occasionally appears in official contexts.[citation needed]
As in most English speaking countries, there is no official governmental regulator or overseer of correct spelling and grammar. Dictionaries such as the Macquarie Dictionary and the Australian Oxford Dictionary have provided a compendium of words and spellings, but often include variants of spellings for certain words regardless of their commonality.[citation needed] This can lead to confusion about what is correct or acceptable spelling in Australian English.
There was a widely held belief in Australia that controversies over spelling resulted from the "Americanisation" of Australian English; the influence of American English in the late 20th century, but the debate over spelling is much older. For example, a pamphlet entitled The So-Called "American Spelling", published in Sydney some time before 1901, argued that "there is no valid etymological reason for the preservation of the u in such words as honor, labor, etc.",[16] alluding to older British spellings which also used the -or ending. The pamphlet also claimed that "the tendency of people in Australasia is to excise the u, and one of the Sydney morning papers habitually does this, while the other generally follows the older form." Newspapers are not always a reliable guide to community preference and usage,[17] as they are often more concerned about saving space.[18] For example, circa 2007 Melbourne newspaper The Age finally changed its longstanding policy of omitting the u, in response to continuing complaints from its readers.[19][verification needed] One of the two major political parties is the Australian Labor Party, spelt without a 'u', with the atypical spelling dating back to 1912 as what was then an attempt to "modernise" the name. The main champion of the spelling change was King O'Malley, a major figure in the party's early history, who publicly claimed to have been born in Canada but was most likely born in the US and spent (almost) all of the first 30 years of his life in the US. It should also be noted that in its early years, the ALP was significantly influenced by the US labour movement.
Words listed by the Macquarie Dictionary as currently often spelled differently to the received British spellings include "program" as opposed to "programme" and "jail" as opposed to "gaol" (although the traditional spellings may still be found in government documents or names such as Boggo Road Gaol).[20]
For a short time during the late 20th Century, Harry Lindgren's 1969 spelling reform proposal (Spelling Reform 1 or SR1) was popular in Australia and was adopted by the Australian government. SR1 calls for the short /e/ sound (as in bet) to be spelt with E (for example friend→frend, head→hed). In Geoffrey Sampson's book Writing Systems (1985) he wrote that SR1 "has been adopted widely by Australians. Many general interest paperbacks and the like are printed in SR1; under Gough Whitlam's Labor Government the Australian Ministry of Helth was officially so spelled (though, when Whitlam was replaced by a liberal administration, it reintroduced orthographic conservatism)".[21][22][23]
[edit] Colloquialisms
Diminutives are commonly used and are often used to indicate familiarity. Some common examples are arvo (afternoon), barbie (barbecue), smoko (originally a smoking break, now often used to refer to morning tea), Aussie (Australian) and pressie (present (gift)). The last two are pronounced /ˈɒzi/ and /ˈprɛzi/ respectively, never with a voiceless 's'.
This may also be done with people's names to create nicknames (other English speaking countries create similar diminutives). For example, "Gazza" from Gary.
Incomplete comparisons are sometimes used, such as "sweet as".
"Full" or "fully" may precede a word to act as an intensifier. This is more common in regional Australia.
The suffix "-ly" is sometimes omitted in broader Australian English. For instance "real good" in lieu of "really good."
South Australia's use of the expression "heaps good" is well known in Australia. The expression is used in some South Australian tourism advertisements. The augmentation "heaps" can be heard throughout Eastern Australia, along with "way" and "far."
Litotes, such as "not bad", "not much" and "you're not wrong", are sometimes used.
Many idiomatic phrases and words once common in Australian English are now stereotypes and caricatured exaggerations, and have disappeared from everyday use. Such outdated and parodied terms include strewth, you beaut and crikey, though these may still be heard in rural areas.
Waltzing Matilda written by bush poet Banjo Paterson contains many obsolete Australian words and phrases that appeal to a rural ideal and are understood by Australians even though they are not in common usage outside the song. One example is the title, which means travelling, particularly with a swag.
[edit] See also
- Australian Aboriginal English
- Australian English vocabulary
- IPA chart for English dialects
- New Zealand English
- South African English
- Cockney English
- Australian Kriol language
- Strine
[edit] References
- ^
en-AU
is the language code for Australian English , as defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) and Internet standards (see IETF language tag). - ^ Moore, B 2008, Speaking our language: the story of Australian English, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p. 69.
- ^ Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore. London: Harvill (1986).
- ^ Geoffrey Blainey, 1993, The Rush That Never Ended (4th ed.) Melbourne University Press
- ^ a b c d Bell, R. Americanization and Australia. UNSW Press (1998).
- ^ Robert J. Menner, "The Australian Language" American Speech, Vol. 21, No. 2 (April 1946), pp. 120
- ^ Oliver, Mackay and Rochecouste. 'The Acquisition of Colloquial Terms by Western Australian Primary School Children from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds' in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24:5 (2003), 413–430.
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=NxHuNOvwt7wC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Australian+English+and+metrication&source=bl&ots=_phbsJFgk9&sig=yNG0L6XLfk9EU-TUyg6WNt6MGC8&hl=en&ei=FsZeS8CxKNigkQXYsJ33Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=&f=false The Cambridge History of the English Language: 1776–1997, By Richard M. Hogg, Suzanne Romaine, Norman Francis Blake, Roger Lass, R. W. Burchfield, page 30
- ^ Robert Mannell, "Impressionistic Studies of Australian English Phonetics"
- ^ Australia's unique and evolving sound Edition 34, 2007 (23 August 2007) – The Macquarie Globe
- ^ Crystal, D. (1995). Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. (2002). International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-80834-9, p. 4.
- ^ Harrington, J., F. Cox, and Z. Evans (1997). "An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian English vowels". Australian Journal of Linguistics 17 (2): 155–84. doi:10.1080/07268609708599550.
- ^ Frederick Ludowyk, 1998, "Aussie Words: The Dinkum Oil On Dinkum; Where Does It Come From?" (0zWords, Australian National Dictionary Centre). Access date: 5 November 2007.
- ^ Dymphna Lonergan, 2002, "Aussie Words: Didgeridoo; An Irish Sound In Australia" (0zWords, Australian National Dictionary Centre). Access date: 5 November 2007.
- ^ The So Called "American Spelling." Its Consistency Examined. pre-1901 pamphlet, Sydney, E. J. Forbes. Quoted by Annie Potts in this article
- ^ "A bevan by any other name could be a bogan"; Don Woolford; The Age; 27 March 2002:
Given a choice between "colour" and "color", 95 per cent chose the former, surprising given that many newspapers drop the "u".
- ^ designwrite.ca: The Serial Comma.
- ^ Reported in the pages of The Age at the time. Precise date T.B.C. Compare also with Webster in Australia by James McElvenny: "[...] the Age newspaper used the reformed spellings up to the end of the 1990s."
- ^ "The Macquarie Dictionary", Third Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 1997, p. 1139 and pp. 1706-1707.
- ^ Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems. Stanford University Press, 1990. p.197.
- ^ Second Reading (Budget Debate) APPROPRIATION BILL (NO. 1) 1973-74 in Australian House of Representatives Hansard
- ^ http://www.englishspellingsociety.org/journals/j9/sr1.php
- Notes
- Mitchell, Alexander G., 1995, The Story of Australian English, Sydney: Dictionary Research Centre.
[edit] External links
- Australian National Dictionary Centre
- The Australian National Dictionary Online
- Australian Word Map at the ABC – documents regionalisms
- R. Mannell, F. Cox and J. Harrington (2009), An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Macquarie University. Accessed 2009-11-08
- Macquarie Dictionary
- Aussie English for beginners – the origins, meanings and a quiz to test your knowledge at the National Museum of Australia.
- Ozwords, Free newsletter from the Australian National Dictionary Centre, which includes articles on Australian English