History of Australian English

In around the mid-17th century it is noted that the Dutch chartered the
western coast of Australia named New Holland which was followed by
the charter of theeastern coastline by Captain James Cook in 1707,
later named New South Wales. It was in the early 19th century the term
Australia was recognized as the name for the continent as a whole. The term
Australian English has not always been used when describing the
language spoken in Australia.

Terms that were previously used include
those of Antipodean English, Austral English and Australasian English,
relecting the language of Australasia as a whole. Prior to the
European settlement in around 1788 there were long periods of
indigenous settlement, that is, Aboriginal. It is estimated that at
the time of the British colonisation around 250 distinct indigenous
languages were in use and well over half of these are no longer in use
today, as noted at, file://A:FATSILAustralian languages.htm.

It is true to say that the accents of Australian English are
stigmatized, even today, especially by middle-class British English
speakers. If one were to research the origins of Australian English
they would probably discover the underlying reasons for this. When
Australia was colonized 200 years ago it was regarded as a convict
colony for Britain which saw the transportation of British convicts
who had, in almost all cases, committed only minor crimes. It is also
the case that these convicts were transported from London and most of
them sentenced there which along with the long journey to the new
continent, meant that there was an overwhelming influence of the
Cockney variety of English amongst the prisoners. It is possible that
this could account for the fact that Australian English appears to be stigmatized by
middle-class British English speakers. Cockney was spoken by all
"Londoners" at one point but this began to change when a new status,
middle-class, was emerging. Middle-class speakers of British English
wanted to portray themselves as such and one way in which they could
achieve this was through speech. This could be seen to be the start
of Standard English which meant that the Cockney variety was now seen
as a language only spoken by the lower classes of London, the poor and
the criminals were then seen as the inferior classes. As this was the
status of the convicts this could explain the stigma attached to
Australian English today.

Due to the geographical isolation of Australia, settlers were under
little or no influence from non-English immigrants. The influence on
Australian English from indigenous languages has been relatively
non-existent with the exception of a few terms. As suggested in The
Oxford Companion to the English Language, this amongst other factors
meant that the term Australian English was not recorded as the
national language until 1940. Even at this time the term was not seen
to be respected. This occurred a few years on in around 1945.


Classification of Australian English

Linguists have distinguished three types of Australian English, as
noted in The Oxford Guide to World English, these are as follows;

(i) Cultivated Australian. Also described as 'acrolect' this type of
spoken Ausralian English is closely associated with the Received
Pronunciation (RP) of British English. As with Britain, this is the
variety that is related to those of a middle-class status, most of who
will be undoubtedly educated, which is portrayed through this spoken
variety. Acrolect holds a certain amount of prestige and as it is a
minority associated with the elite, it is possible that speakers of
general and broad Australian English would see this as disdainful.

(ii) Broad Australian. Also described as 'basilect' this type of
Australian English could be described as the language used mainly
between working-class males, however this is not the exclusive use as
it is sometimes associated with lower middle-class males. Broad
Australian could be seen to portray a notion of comradeship amongst
workers. It is probable that this usage contains more 'local-type'
vowel sounds.

(iii) General Australian. Also described as 'mesolect' this type of
Australian English is as its name suggests, general. Mesolect is
spoken by the majority of AusEng speakers and is a kind of broad
in-between of acrolect and basilect.

It should also be noted that a study by Barbara Horvath (1985)
recognised a further two categories, 'Accented' and 'Ethnic Broad',
which recognised ethnic influences.



Linguistic Features of Australian English

Altough often compared to British English, many linguistic features of
Australian English that are unique and therefore are not associated
with British English. Linguistic features connected with Australian
English include intonation patterns, pronunciation and vocabulary. It
should be noted that there is a distinct lack of grammatical
differences.

(i) Phonetic and Phonological Features

* The Cultivated and General accents of Australia appear to use 24
consonants, 11 vowels and 8 diphthongs

* There is no post-vocalic /r/ within this variety:


hair Speakers of Australian English do not

worker pronounce /r/ in any of these words

* /h/ of 'aitch' is pronounced.

* Fronted /a/. This is a similar feature to that of Southern Irish
and the Liverpool or 'Scouse' variety of British English.
Examples of this include the words dark, calm and heart. This
appears to apply to Australian English vowels in general.

* Neutral vowel suffix's rather than the /i/ of RP. This can be
seen if we look at the words boxes, dances, darkest, velvet and
acid, as suggested in The Oxford Companion to the English
Language.

(ii) Intonation

Another prosodic feature of Australian English and possibly the most
characteristic feature world-wide is that of intonation, a feature
itself of pitch variation.

There are many ways in which to describe the intonation pattern of
Australian English. These include 'Uptalk', Australian Questioning
Intonation and also the High Rising Terminal (HRT). As noted by
Fletcher (2003), the high rising terminal intonation could be
described as a complex fall-rise tune forming part of the intonation
inventory that is a characteristic of Australian English. The HRT
consists of a fall from a relatively high to low pitch level and then
a terminal rise. The final element generally rises to a higher pitch
level, relative to the speaker's normal range.

However, it is true to say that many of the linguistic features
associated with Australian English are not necessarily evident across
all bands. The use of the high rising terminal for example, can be
seen to vary, as seen in a study carried out by Mitchell and Delbridge
(1965).


This particular survey showed that speakers of Broad Australian
English generally used a restricted intonation, that is, more of a
monotonous, narrow pitch range. This in turn shows that the prosodic
feature of intonation in relation to Australian English can be seen to
be of a generic nature. It is possible that the HRT is a feature used
mainly by female speakers. Using such declarative sentences could be
seen as the need for confirmation or reassurance. However, if this
was the case then as we can see from the Mitchell and Delbridge (1965)
survey, Australia would be largely inhabited by insecure females and
of course, this would not account for the masculine use of HRT. It
could be suggested that the use of such intonation is to expedite
speech, to question comprehension maybe.