Australian English

Australian English

Standard Australian English

  • Considered in terms of accent:

    • Broad

    • Cultivated

    • General

  • Aboriginal Australian English

  • Migrant ethnolects within Standard Australian English (SAE)

Hypocoristic Use of Suffixes

  • Involves shortening, modifying, or altering words by adding suffixes like "-o" or "-ie."

    • Examples: "servo" (service station), "sunnies" (sunglasses)

    • "Arvo" (afternoon), "tradie" (tradesperson)

Broad Australian English

  • Associated with:

    • Hard-working individuals

    • Lower class

    • Lack of formal education

    • Stereotypes of laziness

  • Phonological features:

    • Elision and assimilation in consonants

Australian Values/Identity

  • Core values:

    • Friendship, loyalty, solidarity

    • Closeness among people

    • Use of nicknames/vocatives

    • Reducing hierarchies, impacting tenor/register in communication

    • Laughter as a social tool

    • Politeness

    • Egalitarianism: belief in equality, influencing language use by reducing hierarchies

    • Anti-authority stance reflected in relaxed linguistic standards

    • Common use of self-deprecating humor

Features of Aboriginal English

  • Phonological differences:

    • Voiced "th" sounds replaced with voiced "d"

      • "This" becomes "dis," "that" becomes "dat"

    • Addition of an /h/ sound to words starting with a vowel

    • Metathesis (switching of sounds)

      • "Arks" becomes "asks"

Features of Australian English

Phonological Features

  • Non-rhoticity: the 'r' sound is not pronounced unless followed by a vowel.

    • "car" becomes "ka"

  • Flapping: intervocalic 't' is pronounced as a soft 'd' sound.

    • "butter" becomes "budda"

  • H-dropping: omission of the /h/ sound at the beginning of words.

    • "house" becomes "ouse," "have" becomes "ave," "him" becomes "im"

  • Elision: the omission of sounds for ease of pronunciation.

    • "Friendship" becomes "frenship," "comfortable" becomes "comftable"

  • Assimilation: a sound changes to become more like a neighboring sound.

    • "Don’t you" becomes "dontcha," "did you" becomes "didja," "wont you" becomes "wontcha"

Lexicology

  • Slang and colloquialisms: informal words and phrases.

    • Examples: "arvo" (afternoon), "servo" (service station), "bogan" (uncouth person), "chuck a sickie" (take a day off work/school pretending to be sick)

  • Diminutives: shortening words and adding a suffix, often "-o," "-ie," or "-a."

    • Examples: "ambo" (ambulance officer), "firie" (firefighter), "sunnies" (sunglasses), "barbie" (barbecue)

  • Indigenous borrowings: words adopted from Aboriginal languages.

    • Examples: "kangaroo," "boomerang," "cooee"

Grammatical Features

  • Interrogative tags: declarative statements posed as questions.

  • Omission of subjects/auxiliaries:

    • "Seen him at the shops" instead of "I saw him at the shops"

  • Use of "me" instead of "my."

  • Sentence fragmentation: incomplete sentences.

    • "Coming?" instead of "Are you coming?"

  • Imperatives and modal verbs: used or omitted to reflect egalitarianism.

    • "Could you pass the salt?" versus "Pass the salt," depending on context.