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Australian English

Australian English is traditionally considered to be the form of English spoken by people


who are born in Australia or who immigrate at an early age and whose peer network consists of
Australian English speakers. Such a simple definition implies that Australian English is a single
form, which all native-born Australians will attain and exhibit.
Standard AusE shares the same phonemic contrasts as Southern British English, but
differs primarily in the phonetic characteristics of the vowels, as well as some allophonic and
reduction processes. There are also suprasegmental and voice quality differences, which will not
be dealt with here as they are yet to be substantially examined
. The Standard AusE accentis regionally very uniform by global standards however,
some geographically distributed features have been identified, such as the probabilistic
occurrence of vocalised /l/, prelateral and prenasal vowel modifications, and certain other vowel
characteristics

Consonantal features
AusE consonantal features have been studied to a much lesser extent than vowel features.
This is because the consonants of Standard AusE are generally considered fairly unremarkable
and display the same variations present in other major dialects of English.

Standard AusE is non-rhotic as it does not contain prepausal or preconsonantal /r/. This is
probably because Australias white colony was established after r-loss in Southern British
English was already well advanced, if not complete (Beal 1999). However, in connected speech,
linking /r/ (far out, /f__/ /_t/-> /f__r_t/) and intrusive/epenthetic /r/ are typically used.
Linking /r/ occurs when a word containing an underlying or historical /r/ is followed by a vowel.
These words make use of r orthographically, as in car, shore and tuner for instance.
Intrusive /r/ occurs after words that do not have underlying /r/, as in spa, law and tuna.

Vowel features
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 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. As with General American and New Zealand English, the weak-vowel merger is
complete in Australian English: unstressed // (sometimes written as //or //) is merged
into // (schwa).

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 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 (/el/), 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 // ("long 'O'") rather than // ("short o"). Similarly, vitamin is pronounced with /e/ ("long
'I'") in the first syllable, rather than // ("short 'I'"). Despite this,advertisement is pronounced
with //. Brooch is pronounced with // as opposed to //, and Anthony with // rather than /t/.

Regional variation
Although Australian English is relatively homogeneous, some regional variations are
notable. The dialects of English spoken in South Australia, Western Australia, New South
Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the Torres Strait Islands differ slightly from each other.
Differences in terms of vocabulary and phonology exist.
Most regional differences come down to word usage. For example, swimming clothes are
known as cossies or swimmers in New South Wales, togs in Queensland, and bathers in Victoria,
Western Australia and South Australia; what is referred to as a stroller in most of Australia is
called a pusher in Victoria and South Australia and usually a pram in Western
Australia. Preference for synonymous words also differs between states. For
example, garbage (i.e. garbage bin, garbage truck) dominates over rubbish in New South Wales
and Queensland, while rubbish is more popular in Victoria, Western Australia and South
Australia. The word footy generally refers to the most popular football code in the particular state
or territory; that is, rugby league in New South Wales and Queensland, and Australian rules
football elsewhere. Beer glasses are also named differently in different states. Distinctive
grammatical patterns exist such as the use of the interrogative eh?.
Although Australia has no official language, it is largely monolingual with English being
the de facto national language. Australian English has a distinctive accent and vocabulary.
According to the 2011 census, 76.8% of people spoke only English at home.

Bibliography:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English
2 .Australian English pronunciation into the 21st century, FELICITY COX Macquarie
University

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