Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Chelyabinsk State University

Faculty of Linguistics

English Language Department

Term Project

Accents and Dialects

Received Pronunciation vs Australian English

Student , group # LIE-303 Muravlyova N.V.

С.p.s. Associate professor of the
English Language Department
Suslova O.V.

Chelyabinsk

2009
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION___________________________________________________3

CHAPTER 1. Major differences between Australian English and Received

Pronunciation

1.1General overview of the dialect______________________________________4

1.2The system of consonants__________________________________________4
1.3The system of vowels_____________________________________________5
1.4The accentual structure and intonation_________________________________7

CHAPTER 2. Major differences between Australian English and Received

Pronunciation (practical application)

2.1 The system of consonants__________________________________________8

2.2 The system of vowels_____________________________________________8
2.3 The accentual structure and intonation________________________________9

CONCLUSION____________________________________________________10
BIBLIOGRAPHY__________________________________________________11
APPENDIX_______________________________________________________12

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 INTRODUCTION

To start with, the anglophone Australia and New Zealand are two of the
youngest nations in the world. The first Europeans who took their residence in
Australia came more than 200 years ago. They did not come because they wanted to.
Australia was founded as a penal colony. Convicts from Britain, mostly from large
English cities, were sent there. They were joined by free settlers, military personnel
and administrators, often with their families. However, a large part of the convict
body was 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. English was not spoken, or was poorly spoken,
by a large part of the convict population, and the dominant English input was that of
Cockney South-East England
They were eventually followed by voluntary immigrants. Until now, the
Australian with British ancestor is the predominant part of the population. Among
them, the area where a nowadays Australian most probably can find their ancestors is
the region around London. The second important group of immigrants were Irish,
mainly responsible for the huge number of Catholics in Australia compared with
Britain (30.4% in 1851).
Later Australian English was influenced by “Americanization”, a lot of new
words, spelling, terms and usages were introduced. In XIX century the reason was the
immigration during the Australian gold rushes, and in XX century American
influence has mostly arrived via pop culture and through the mass media – books,
magazines, television programs, and computer software – and the web.

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 CHAPTER 1 Major differences between Australian English and Received
Pronunciation

1.1General overview of the dialect

As for modern Australian English, according to linguists there are three main
varieties of it which are spoken: Broad, General and Cultivated. They reflect
variations in accent and the social class or educational background of the speaker as
well, but not very often.
Broad Australian English (BAusE) is recognisable and familiar to English
speakers around the world because it is used to identify Australian characters in non-
Australian films and television programs. On the other hand, the majority of
Australians speak with the General Australian accent (GAusE). This predominates
among modern Australian films and television programs. As for Cultivated
Australian English (CAusE), it has some similarities to British Received
Pronunciation, and is often mistaken for it. Cultivated Australian English is spoken
by some within Australian society.

1.2 The system of consonants

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below.

Consonant phonemes of Australian English

  Bilabial Labio- Dental Alveolar Post- Palatal Velar Glottal
dental alveolar
Nasal   m           n           ŋ    
Plosive p b         t d         k ɡ    
Affricate                 tʃ dʒ            
Fricative     f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ         h  
Approximant               ɹ       j   w    
Lateral               l                

 Australian accent is non-rhotic: star /stɑ:/.

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  Many speakers have also coalesced /dj/, /sj/ and /tj/ into /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /tʃ/,
producing standard pronunciations such as /tʃu:n/ for tune.

 The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap /ɾ/ before unstressed
vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a
word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most
speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are
pronounced identically.

 Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as /n/ or /ɾ/, which can make
winter and winner homophones. Interesting will sound like inner-resting. Most
areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization
of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that V/nt/ and V/n/ remain phonemically distinct.
In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases
where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the
preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in
entails.

1.3 The system of vowels

Australian English vowels are divided into two categories: long, which
includes long monophthongs and diphthongs, and short, all of which are
monophthongs. Australian English long vowels mostly correspond to the tense
vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centralising
diphthongs whereas its short vowels correspond to the lax vowels. A number of
vowels differ only by the length.

The phonetic basis for the three accent types emerges from a consideration of
these qualities. The broad accent makes much use of tongue movements which are
more open or further forward than the RP norms. The cultivated accent is, literally,
further back.

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 The vowel system of BAusE is very similar to Cockney, the accent of
working class in London while the counterpart of CAusE is close to that of British.
CAusE differs from GAusE and BAusE in terms of Diphthong Shifting, which is
similar to that found in the southeast of England. BAusE is close to GAusE but with
extra duration in the first element of the diphthongs. The mainly rural broad type has
noticeably slow diphthongs.
RP              AusE (IPA) Example

         /i:/                        /iə/ Me                         mere

         /u:/                       /əu/ Boot                        boat
/æ/ /e/ Bad bed

         /əu/                      /ʌʊ/ Row                       raow

         /au/                      /æu/ Cow                       caew

         /ai/                       /ɔi / Nine                         noy
         /ei/                      /æi/ Day                         die
/ɪə/ /i:/ Near knee
/eə/ /e:/ Hare her

Observations of Australian English vowels have given us detailed insight into

variations that occur within the dialect and how Australian English (AusE) differs
from British and American. The major characteristics of Australian are summarized
as following.
The front vowels in Australian, as in the words /I/, /e/, and /æ/ are all raised
relative to the same vowels in British. This means that the vowel in the word /I/ is
rather closer to the /i:/ vowel than in British. The vowel /e/ is closer to the /I/ vowel
than in British and the vowel in the word /æ/ is closer to the /e/ vowel than in British.
The vowels in the words /O:/ and /O/, which are back vowels in British, are more
fronted in Australian and therefore closer to the /æ/ vowel. The high /u:/ and /u/
vowels are very similar to one another in British but these two are quite distinct in
AusE.
The centering diphthongs /Iə/ and /e:/ occurring in Australian are often
pronounced with negligible off glide such that the production is rather like prolonged
monophthongal realization /I/ and /e/ vowels e.g. weary /wIəri:/ /wI:əi/.

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 The glides in the /æq/ and /qu/ vowels have different orientations in British
relative to Australian. The rising diphthongs such as /æI/, /ae/, /OI/, /æq/, and /əu/
occur. /əu/, /ae/, /OI/ vowels have undergone a process of shift such that in Australian
/æI/ is similar to British /ae/. In some instances, these differences may lead to
misunderstanding such as the unfortunate woman who believed she was being sent
home from the hospital ‘to die’ after being informed that she was ‘going home today’
Australian English prefers the word-internal /ə/ and the word-final /i:/ to the
unstressed /I/, e.g. that sounds for an Englishman as if it were thet.
The Australian tend to merge all the unstressed vowels in /ə/ where British
use / I/ and the ending – y, e.g., July /Gqlai/, Geelong, /Gqlaŋ/. /R/ is produced as /a/
in most positions, in words like dance even /æ/.

1.4 The accentual structure and intonation

Speaking about the accentual structure there is no difference in the position of

stress in words.
As for intonation, it is characterized by examples of uptalk, i.e. high rising
terminals associated with syntactic declarative utterances. While a variety of tunes
were found in turn-final contexts, speakers tended to use mid-level, high rises, and
fall-rises, whereas more final falls coincided with turn-yielding position. There were
minimal differences in the spread of intonational patterns across the city and country
corpora, although country speakers used marginally more uptalk than city speakers.
At the same time, CA speakers tend to have a slightly smaller intonation
range than RP speakers. This lead to several criticisms of CA speech as
"monotonous" by many speech trainers earlier this century. There are other traits of
RP pronunciation that are not present in CA, such as frequent use of a definite vowel
in the final position.

CHAPTER 2. Major differences between Australian English and RP

(practical application)

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 Point of Australian English RP
Comparison
1.Consonants [wɒɘʔ] White [waIt]
[enz] Ends [endz]
[q‘bAf] Above [q‘bAv]

2. Vowels [ɫɒIt] Light [laIt]

[strɒIk] Strike [straIk]
[e:] Air [eq]
[tʰæɪk] Take [teIk]
[ɹɛənd] Round [ɹaund]
[‘ræɪmbəu] Rainbow [‘reɪmbəu]
[‘ɹæɪndɹɔps] Raindrops [‘ɹeɪndɹɔps]
[me:n] Man [mxn]
[‘bjɵɾɘfɫ] Beautiful [‘bju:tqfɫ]
[fɔm] Form [fɔ:m]
[ðɪiz] These [ðiz]
[fɒ:nd] Find [faiInd]

3.Intonation While reading a The intonation used by the RP

passage intonation was speaker is quite common: Low Rise
almost the same as RP for non-final sense groups and Low
speaker. While talking Fall for final sense groups in
statements and High Rise for
in spot we can notice
exclamations.
the cases of up-talk,
which is a characteristic
feature of Australian
Dialect

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4.Rhythm While speaking on spot The rhythm and The RP speaker uses pauses only
the speaker uses many the tempo of the when they are necessary. This
unnecessary pauses, speech depend on makes the rhythm of the speech
what makes the rhythm the speaker. quite regular.
Therefore, we
of his speech irregular.
can’t compare
these two points
on the accents
scale.

5.Tempo The tempo due to the The regular rhythm makes the
irregularity of rhythm and tempo of the speech quite high.
many unnecessary pauses
is quite low.

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CONCLUSION

To sum up, Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by

most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally
homogeneous language varieties in the world. As with most dialects of English, it is
distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Cox Felicity & Sallyanne Palethorpe , "Australian English", Journal of the

International Phonetic Association 37 (3): 341-350, 2007
2. Crystal, David . The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2 ed.).
Cambridge University Press., 2003

3. Gimson, A.C., An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English, Edward Arnold,

London, 1964

4. Harrington, J.; Felicity Cox & Z. Evans, "An acoustic phonetic study of broad,
general, and cultivated Australian English vowels", Australian Journal of
Linguistics 17: 155–84,1997

5. Mitchell and Delbridge "Phonetics of English in Australia", 2004

6. Roach, Peter , "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the

International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 239-245, 2004

7. Wells, J.C. Accents of English London: Cambridge University Press, 1982, rep.
1985

8. www.englishlanguage.ru

9. http://web.ku.edu/~idea/australiaoceania/australia/australia4pt.pdf

10.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English_phonology

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APPENDIX

THE RAINBOW PASSAGE.

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a
rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colours. These
take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends
apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at
one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something
beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow.

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