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