Australian English and New Zealand English

ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
human languages spoken in Australia for 40,000 years British colony founded in 1786, in 1901 it became a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire that has today evolved into an independent state today English is the native language of virtually all native-born Australians (except possibly for a few very young or very old Aboriginals)
many indigenous languages are extinct or moribund some survive along the north coast as well as the western and central interior

English became established around the beginning of the 19th century

Australian English is therefore much more similar to the accents of present-day England than North American English, but enough time has passed to develop a distinctive accent different from any spoken in England

Australia comes from the Latin phrase terra australis incognita (unknown southern land) that geographers used to describe a continent they thought existed south of Africa and Asia
in the mid-17th century the Dutch charted the western coastline of New Holland in 1707 Cook charted the eastern coastline, called continent New South Wales explorer Matthew Flinders and Governor Macquarie favored and promoted the name Australia, which was established from the 1820s on

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Australian English and New Zealand English

GENERAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH IN AUSTRALIA
Australian English is remarkably homogenous/uniform, no classic geographical dialects (e.g. no difference Perth Sidney despite 3000 km distance)
early white Australians entered through a very small number of seaports and remained in contact by sea through these ports social (and linguistic) solidarity against Britain-based officials and administrators high mobility (i.e. lots of mixing) of the early Australian population

three main social dialects: Broad, General and Cultivated Australian

main difference in vowel quality
cultivated: very similar to RP (essentially Near-RP), minority accent, considered snobbish general: strong vowel shifts similar to southeastern England, middle class accent broad: strong rural and working-class accent with lengthened first elements of diphthongs

all forms of Southern Hemisphere English share features of southeastern English of the early 19th century: non-rhoticity, raising of short front vowels Australian English carries forward trends already present in the popular accents of southeastern England, esp. diphthong shifts quite similar to Cockney
differences: no glottal stops, no vocalization of /l/
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Australian English and New Zealand English

AUSTRALIA

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Australian English and New Zealand English

AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH - VOWELS
push-chain effect on long vowels and diphthongs (phonetically, but not phonologically relevant), Broad Australian generally has a lengthened first element in the diphthong (e.g., [] vs [: ]:
1st chain: /i:/ [] (see [s]), // [] (say [s]), /a/ [] (sigh [s]), // [o] (soy [so]) 2nd chain: /u:/[] (boot [bt]), //[] (boat [bt]), /a/[o] (bout [bot])

monophthongs:
raised front vowels: //// (man /mn/); ///e/ (men /men/); // /i/ (fish [fi]) fronted back vowel: // /a/ (car /ka:/, palm /pa:m/) some 18th century //-words (mostly with following nasal) retain //, thus // (e.g., dance), others do not and have RP-like //, thus /a/ (e.g., last)

centering diphthongs are monophthongized to long vowels:

// /i:/ (fear /fi:/), // /e:/ (shared /e:d/), //, // /:/ no smoothing as in RP: fire is [f]

weak vowels
word-final // (-er) lowered to // ever [ev] unstressed // usually replaced by // (rabbit /bt/, begin [bgin]) final -y is pronounced /i:/ (happy [hpi:])

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Australian English and New Zealand English

AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH VARIOUS CHARACTERISTICS consonants:
Australian English is non-rhotic, has both Linking- and Intrusive // tapping of /t/, /d/ possible, though not as widespread as in GA (matter [m]) no allophonic variation of /l/, usually a dark realization []

prosody
generally flat intonation compared to RP

miscellaneous pronunciation features

assume and presume often pronounced [md], [phmd] respectively initial /tj dj/ often pronounced as / / (tune [n], duke [k]) the sequence /lj/ often reduced to /j/: brilliant as [bijnt]

grammatical characteristics
not many differences from British English collective nouns take singular verb forms (the government has made a mistake), as opposed to BE plural forms (the government have decided) she can be used to refer to inanimate objects and in impersonal constructions (Shes a stinker today Its excessively hot today)

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Australian English and New Zealand English

AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH LEXICAL CHARACTERISTICS characteristic vocabulary
general vocabulary
to barrack for (to support), footpath (sidewalk), frock (dress), Goodday/GDay (hello), gumboots (rubber boots), lolly (any sweets), paddock (field), picture theatre (cinema), to chunder (to vomit), crook (ill, angry), dag (eccentric person), drongo (fool), to rubbish (to pour scorn on), sheila (girl), to front up (to present oneself), to bot (to borrow), to shoot through (to leave), tucker (food), wog (germ), spell (rest, break), park (parking space), to chyack (to tease), offsider (partner, companion), chook (chicken), to fine up (to improve, esp. weather)

as in AE:
sedan (saloon car), station wagon (estate car), stove (cooker)

abbreviations (with productive suffixes):

beaut (beautiful, beauty), uni (university) truckie (truck driver), tinnie (beer can) arvo (afternoon), muso (musician) nicknames: Stevo (Steve(n)), Bazza (Barry), Mezza (Mary)

loans from aboriginal languages

boomerang, dingo, jackaroo (apprentice on sheep farm), billabong, kangaroo

some idiomatic usage

thanks in requests: Can I have a cup of tea, thanks?
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Australian English and New Zealand English

ENGLISH IN NEW ZEALAND
Maori name Aotearoa (land of the long white cloud) Dutch explorer Abel Tasman reached it in 1642, called it Nieuw Zeeland after a Dutch province James Cook visits it in 1769; first settlement by seal hunters in 1792
became administrative extension of New South Wales, then a colony In 1840 the Maori ceded sovereignty to the British Crown

New Zealand English was established in its essentials by the 1840s and is quite similar to Australian English, but also has some distinctly different features
only slightly younger than Australian English with similar settlement history

geographically homogenous without pronounced regional characteristics

no difference between North and South Island exception: southernmost provinces of South Island (Otago, Southland)
rhotic Southland Burr due to Scottish settlement history

similar range of social dialects from Cultivated to General to Broad New Zealand English Maori make up about 10% of the population of about 4 million

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Australian English and New Zealand English

NEW ZEALAND

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Australian English and New Zealand English

NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH - PHONETIC CHARACTERISTICS
generally very similar to Australian English:
non-rhotic, occasional tapping, shifted long vowels, raised front vowels

centralized pronunciation of // as [], leading to a merger with the phoneme //, meaning that the phoneme // is missing in New Zealand English
in final position it has a lowered allophone [] (similar to Australian English):
e.g., : finish [fn], dinner (phonemically /dn/ vs phonetically [dn])

is the major distinctive feature of New Zealand English

front vowels are raised as in Australian English,

// even higher to [] not just [e] (neck as [nk])
centering diphthong [] for [e] before /d/ (shed as [d])

extreme rounding of /:/ to [:] (turn as [th:n]) centering diphthongs do exist but are raised: // [] (fair sounds like fear), // [i] (near as [ni]) /i:/ and /u:/ not diphthongized, instead centralized to [] and [] very dark /l/ (may be pharyngeal) retracts preceding vowels (tool as [thu:], goal as [g] not *[g]), neutralizes distinctions e.g., doll, dull, dole neutralized to [d] older New Zealanders still distinguish /w/ and //
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Australian English and New Zealand English

NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH LEXICAL/GRAMMATICAL CHARACTERISTICS

characteristic vocabulary and idioms

distinctive English vocabulary: tramping (hiking), to farewell (to say good-bye to), to jack up (arrange), joker (guy, bloke), to skite (to boast), domain (recreation area), to uplift (to collect, to pick up), to go crook at (be angry with), bach (cabin, cottage), chilly bin (portable insulated food container), grass fence (strip of long grass along an electric fence), share-milker (tenant farmer) shared with Australian English: barrack, wowser (spoilsport), offsider, crook, dill (fool), chook, dunny (lavatory), informal vote (invalid vote) adoptions from Maori and other Polynesian languages: mana (prestige, power), aue (expression of astonishment), haere mai ( a greeting), haka (posture dance), pakeha (white New Zealander), tapu (sacred), aiga (Samoan extended family), animals and plants such as kiwi, tuatara, biddy-bid idiomatic expressions: Raffertys rules (no rules at all) diminutive suffixes:
-ie: boatie (boating enthusiast), swannie (all-weather wool jacket), wharfie (waterside worker), truckie (truck driver) -o/-oh: arvo (afternoon), bottle-oh (dealer in used bottles), compo (compensation), smoko (break from work)

characteristic grammatical (morphological and syntactic) features

generally similar to Australian English
avoidance of shall / should almost as in Scottish English (Will I close the window)
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