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British and Australian English - Vocabulary

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Differences in British and Australian English - Learning English Online

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Inglés australiano - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

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Existieron ciertas influencias del hiberno-inglés, pero tal vez no tanto como pudiese esperarse teniendo en cuenta que muchos australianos son descendientes de irlandeses.

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manwe

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A new life Down Under

Australia is one of the world's most culturally diverse countries. Despite a growing trend of new residents from across the globe, the people of Australia are still predominantly of British origin. In 2013, 1,221,300 Australians were born in the UK.

Since the First Fleet set sail in 1787, millions of Brits have started a new life Down Under. Today's enticing job opportunities, family-friendly society and relaxed outdoor lifestyle are in sharp contrast to the reality faced by the first migrants.

Golden opportunities

The catalyst for an influx of arrivals in New South Wales was the discovery of gold and the prospect of making a fortune.

In the height of the gold rush more than 600,000 people arrived in Australia (81% from the United Kingdom, 10% from Europe, 7% from China and 2% from elsewhere). This influx of fortune hunters, known as diggers, helped change the convict colonies into more progressive cities as the growing emigrant population brought with them new skills and professions. The gold rushes resulted in a burgeoning economy and by the end of the 19th Century Australia was the world's largest producer of gold.
BBC Bitesize: The Australian Gold Rush

Targeted migration

During the 1980s there was a shift from large-scale assisted migration programmes. Now immigrants were targeted to fill labour shortages.

Quotas for permanent migration and heightened requirements for visas were introduced in 1989. The Migration Programme was divided into three streams - family, skilled and humanitarian. In 1997, greater priority was given to the skilled migration stream. The government welcomed migrants with blue and white collar skills, regardless of nationality. These restrictions resulted in a decline in the number of Brits moving to Australia. The skills list remains in place today.
Australian Skilled Occupation List

Legacy of an empire

The decline of British migration to Australia since the 1980s has meant that the British-born component of the population is falling.

Despite this decline, Australia remains the number one destination for British migrants. The Australian government continues to campaign for skilled migrants from the UK to fill labour shortages. With over 200 years of British settlement, Australian society is still strongly influenced by its British heritage through art, literature, drama, music, fashion, sport and cuisine.
Whatever happened to the British Empire?

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Australia: A nation shaped by British emigration

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Australia is one of the world's most culturally diverse countries. Despite a growing trend of new residents from across the globe, the people of Australia are still predominantly of British origin. In 2013, 1,221,300 Australians were born in the UK. Since the First Fleet set sail in 1787, millions of Brits have started a new life Down Under.

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Australia wants, and will welcome, new healthy citizens who are determined to become good Australians.
Arthur Caldwell, Australian Minister for Immigration, 1945

British migrants arrive in Sydney on the Fairsea, c.1963. Courtesy National Archives of Australia

After World War II ended in May 1945 Europe was in chaos. Germany was crushed and the map of Europe was being carved up by the United States and the Soviet Union. Western Europe was supported by the United States while Eastern Europe was invaded by the Soviet Union. Migrants began streaming out of Eastern Europe to places like Australia and the United States to get away from the oppression in their homelands by the Soviet Union. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union meant that nuclear war was a real threat and some people saw Australia as a safe place to live.

Between 1945 and 1965 more than two million migrants came to Australia. Most were assisted: the Commonwealth Government paid most of their fare to get to Australia. In return they had to stay in Australia for at least two years and work in whatever jobs the Government gave them.

German migrants arrive onboard a T.A.A. Viscount flight, c.1956. These migrants flew from Hamburg, Germany, under the assisted passage scheme sponsored by the Inter-governmental Committee for European Migration. Courtesy National Archives of Australia

The first wave of post war migration began with Displaced Persons. These people fled their countries which had been utterly destroyed by war or overran by the Soviet Union. Between 1947 and 1953 the Australian Government assisted over 170,000 Displaced Persons to migrate to Australia.

Primary school at Bathurst Migrant Camp, c.1951. Courtesy National Archives of Australia National Archives of Australia

The second wave of post-war immigration arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, and consisted of those seeking employment and better living conditions. These programs were an enormous success.

Snowy Mountains Authority workers excavating for the Murray Power Station in 1954. Courtesy National Library of Australia

A number of migrants spent their first months in Australia living in migrant hostels while they tried to find themselves a home. Some found work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme, others in factories and others did the hard and dirty jobs in heavy industry. Skilled migrants found it hard to find work to suit their training and qualifications and had to accept what work was available. All migrants, especially those who did not speak English well, had to put up with prejudice.

A Gift from the Australian People under the Colombo Plan, Lionel Lindsay, 1954, Courtesy National Library of Australia

The Colombo Plan was started in 1951 by the Commonwealth of Nations so that developed countries of the Commonwealth could help the less developed ones. The Australian Government also promoted the Plan to improve its relationships with Asian countries and dispel negative impressions caused by the White Australia Policy. Later, many non-Commonwealth countries joined the Plan. The six countries supplying aid to 20 developing countries were Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Japan and the United States. The countries that received aid included Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand.

The rich countries provided grants and loans to help the other countries develop their industry and agriculture. In 1983 Australia gave $59 million in aid to support the Colombo Plan. Students from developing countries were brought to Australia to study. When they had finished their studies they returned to use the skills and knowledge they had acquired to help their own people. In 1986 there were 3500 foreign students and trainees whose studies and living costs were paid for by the Australian Government.

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Australia wants, and will welcome, new healthy citizens who are determined to become good Australians. Arthur Caldwell, Australian Minister for Immigration, 1945 British migrants arrive in Sydney on the Fairsea, c.1963. Courtesy National Archives of Australia After World War II ended in May 1945 Europe was in chaos.

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Posted March 16, 2015 11:41:58

Tracing the changes in Australian English from the First Fleet to present day is really about exploring the story of the nation, author Kel Richards says.

The English language arrived in Australia a little more than 200 years ago and since that time it has been levelled, sculpted and adapted to give Australians a specific dialect.

"When you trace the story of Australian English from 1788 to the present day, you find yourself actually tracing the story of the whole nation," Richards told 702 ABC Sydney's Dominic Knight.

Beyond the influences and movements that shaped our use and understanding of English, Richards said we first needed to consider our concept of language.

"They now say there is no such thing as English, the English language doesn't exist, there are only Englishes, only dialects.

"We have our dialects and as it happens, quite by coincidence, it is the best, most colourful, most inventive English dialect on the planet."

Richards has studied and interpreted the language's history and documented it in his new book, The Story of Australian English.

The beginnings of the Australian accent

According to Richards, the beginning of our Australian accent emerged following the arrival of European settlers in 1788.

"It emerged from a process called levelling down because you had all these people who came here on 11 ships from different dialect areas, regional dialect areas across England," he said.

"They all spoke differently and they used different words and what they had to do, in order to communicate with each other, was to level their dialect variations down."

Around 50 years after the colony was established, Richards said English people arriving in Australia started to claim that Australians were speaking the "purest English on earth".

This discovery period of other ways of speaking and other words for things brought an acute awareness of the language and sound.

"What our accent really is, is English with the dialect variations taken out.

"We now think of it as being our dialect, and it is, but that's what was happening in those early [days], it happened really fast."

Language 'ambushed' by elocution movements

About 100 years on from the First Fleet, Richards said the arrival of the elocution movement in the 1880s and 1890s "ambushed" our language and changed it for good.

"It started off on how to annunciate and speak clearly but what they did was pick one dialect, standard southern English, and they said 'that is correct'.

"Standard southern English came to be what is called RP, Received Pronunciation, Oxbridge, that kind of accent.

"That was right, everything else was wrong."

According to Richards, before this time general, middle Australian accents were predominant before cultivated and broad Australian accents arrived later, as a reaction to the elocution movement.

The story of our language, from 1788 to the present day, is actually the story of the nation.

"The evidence for this is that in the late 1950s, researchers went out and tape recorded some elderly people in their 80s and 90s who had been born in the far west of New South Wales and some of them in Tasmania," he explained.

"They all had general, middle Australian accents because when they were born in the 1880s and 1890s. There was no broad Australian, there was no cultivated Australian, it hadn't happened yet."

Population movements from the early military colony days to the stock industry, gold rushes and onwards undoubtedly had an impact on the variations in accent across the country.

However, Richards said perhaps not to the degree seen in other countries.

"If you look at what happened in America, the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock and they stayed there and built up that colony.

"Another group of English people landed at Savannah, in Georgia, and they built up that colony and they remained in these isolated colonies for about 100 years.

"They developed their own vocabulary, their own accents, hence the range of accents in America."

Tracing the story of our language and the influences

As Richards explained, English dialect words, patois spoken by thieves called the Flash language, some military terms and Indigenous language have all informed the Australian vocabulary.

"They had to turn to the locals and say 'what do I call that?'

"It is such a rich and important part of our language."

In terms of Flash language as spoken by the convicts, a man by the name of James Hardy Vaux who authored an autobiography at the time, documented much of the slang found littered in our language today.

"A word like swag, swag was a bundle of stolen goods," he said.

"Then it becomes any bundle of goods and then the person who carries it becomes a swagman and suddenly you're in the middle of Waltzing Matilda, that's the way it works.

"The story of our language, from 1788 to the present day, is actually the story of the nation."

Topics: community-and-society, government-and-politics, human-interest, history, sydney-2000

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Posted March 16, 2015 11:41:58 Tracing the changes in Australian English from the First Fleet to present day is really about exploring the story of the nation, author Kel Richards says. The English language arrived in Australia a little more than 200 years ago and since that time it has been levelled, sculpted and adapted to give Australians a specific dialect.

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Have you ever wondered where Australian English came from, or what in the world "Scarnon, mate?" means? Well, if you have, you've come to the right place! My name is Dan Poole, an Australian and lover of all languages including my own, from Melbourne - Australia's business and cultural hub. I have my own Chinese language and culture blog called 'Chinese-Breeze' that you guys can check out too, where I give lots of language learning tips.

Throughout human history, the 'world language' has changed many times. There has been a continual worldwide game of linguistic 'musical chairs' as the balance of power shifts and re-shifts between different groups over time. Languages such as Latin or Greek, during the great Roman and Byzantine Empires, respectively, are both examples of long serving lingua francas that have dominated at different points in time. Today, due to globalisation and the current age of technology, the boundaries once separating the East and West and other formerly isolated areas have now been well and truly broken.

If you were to have asked world leaders from only a few hundred years ago which language they thought would become the most spoken language in the world at the dawn of the new millennium, during such an unprecedented time for the human race as the one we live in, it is unlikely that anyone would have predicted that the bastard language originating from England - a small, wet and rocky island on the Atlantic Ocean, would be that language.

And yet, English has taken the position of the lingua franca of the modern world. It enjoys this status in most fields, but particularly in business, but also now in diplomacy, medicine and science, undermining languages such as French and German which once held this status.

Unsurprisingly, an almost innumerable quantity of dialects of English have emerged and developed over time in England and the colonies (and former colonies). It could be argued that the three 'main' types of English are the American, British and Australian variants. However, within these categories fall a huge number of sub-variants that vary in pronunciation, vocabulary, accent, spelling and grammar, to the point where communication between certain groups is often quite difficult. Even within Australia, two people from extremely different areas may have some problems communicating.

Today I will introduce you to the evolution of the Australian variety of English, including the variations that occur within this vast country with a comparatively tiny population of only approximately 25 million people.

History

Australia was first colonised by the English for use as a penal colony (there were, of course, Aboriginal people that already inhabited the continent) - in other words, Australia was an island jail that Britain used as a solution to their problem of having an overflowing prison population. These early settlers were, therefore, primarily convicts, who were sent from all over Great Britain, including Ireland, Wales, Scotland. Later events, such as the gold rush, sparked several waves of immigration from Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. As such, the common belief that Australians are all descendants of criminals is largely untrue - only a small minority are! The reality is that any two given Australians could have wildly different ethnicities and ancestries. Also, in those days, people could be imprisoned or sent to Australia for minor crimes, like the theft of a loaf of bread. Also, today, Australia is home to the largest Greek and Italian communities in the world, outside Greece and Italy. This has given rise to the development of 'Greek-Australian' and 'Italian-Australian' variants of the Australian accent.

Australian English was created with the first generation of children born in the new colony, who, due to their exposure to a wide range of accents, and also to completely separate languages such as Gaelic and Welsh, began to speak a distinct dialect of English that was to become the language of the nation. These differences were first noted by late arrivals in the early 1800s, and was said to bear a strong resemblance to Cockney English, spoken by the working-class in London.

Soon, elements and words from Aboriginal languages were to become part of the Australian vernacular. In researching for this article, I actually discovered that a lot of words I previously thought to be 'standard' English are actually derived from Indigenous Australian languages! Here are some examples:

The names of many places and animals - including Canberra (the Australian capital, meaning 'meeting place' in a local language), dingo, kangaroo, budgerigar, boomerang, wallaby.

Hard yakka - meaning 'hard work', derived from the Jagera language of the Brisbane area.

Cooee - a high-pitched call used traditionally by Aboriginal Australians to attract attention, used due to its ability to travel long distances.

Bung - meaning 'dead', but also used to mean broken or useless, for example "He has a bung eye".

Other Common Australian English Words and Expressions

'Tradies', 'sparkies', 'chippies', 'brickies', 'rangas' - meaning tradesmen, electricians, carpenters, bricklayers and people with red hair, respectively. Note that this last one is derogatory and its use is frowned upon.

'Thongs' - are what American's refer to as 'flip-flops'. Get your mind out of the gutter.

'Macca's' - is the commonly used name for McDonalds in colloquial speech.

The 'big smoke' - used primarily by people from the country to refer to big cities, usually Sydney or Melbourne.

'Ankle biters '- children.

A 'bludger' - a lazy person.

'Fair dinkum' - real or genuine, i.e. "a fair dinkum Aussie".

'Off one's face'/'smashed'/'para' - refer to being drunk, "I was off my face last night".

'Shithouse' - something of very bad quality. "That parma is shithouse!"

To be 'spewin' - To be very angry or disappointed.

Variations of Australian English Within Australia

Within Australia itself are many different variations of Australian English, as well as many Creole languages that have emerged since colonisation through contact with Aboriginal people. Despite being such a large country, the variations in Australian English occur primarily between different sociocultural groups, however there are also some differences between the States (although this is mainly limited to small differences in vocabulary).

One interesting example of different vocabulary between the States is the use of the slang terms 'tight' in Victoria and 'slack' in New South Wales to mean the same thing, despite the fact that, literally speaking, these two words are opposite in meaning. They are both used to describe someone who is behaving in an unfair or mean way ("dude, don't be tight").

According to linguists, the main sociocultural variants of Australian English are the broad, general and cultivated ones. The 'broad' accent is what you imagine when you think of what a stereotypical Australian accent sounds like, for example, the accents of Steve Irwin or Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee). It is spoken nationwide, however it is most common in rural areas. The 'general' accent is used primarily by people living in metropolitan areas (I would classify myself in this category), an example of which would be Hugh Jackman. 'Cultivated' Australian English is much less common now than it was in previous generations, perhaps due to a change in social values. It historically denoted high social class or education, however it is often considered to be pretentious nowadays.

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed the post! Hopefully you all learnt something about Australian English. We're still a small country, but our population is rising rapidly, especially due to immigration. Australia is a popular destination for migrants due to our relatively stable economic condition. It may be that we may become one of the big players in the future!

Thanks for reading! If you want some more information about me, you can check out my blog Chinese-Breeze .

Related links

Dan is a University student from Melbourne, Australia, studying Law and Arts with a Chinese major. He has been in love with languages ever since spending a semester living with a French family back in High School, and thinks everyone should speak another language. He speaks English, French, Spanish, and Chinese, with varying ability, and runs his own language blog about learning Chinese ( Chinese-Breeze). Next year, he will be studying Chinese full time in China at Nanjing University.

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The development of Australian English - Dan

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Have you ever wondered where Australian English came from, or what in the world "Scarnon, mate?" means? Well, if you have, you've come to the right place! My name is Dan Poole, an Australian and lover of all languages including my own, from Melbourne - Australia's business and cultural hub.

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The percentage of people who speak only the English language at home, 2021

Australian English ( AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and de facto national language; while Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the national language since British settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians. It is also the main language used in compulsory education, as well as federal, state and territorial legislatures and courts.

Australian English began to diverge from British and Hiberno-English after the First Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales in 1788. Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southeast England. By the 1820s, the native-born colonists' speech was recognisably distinct from speakers in Britain and Ireland.

Australian English differs from other varieties in its phonology, pronunciation, lexicon, idiom, grammar and spelling. Australian English is relatively consistent across the continent, although it encompasses numerous regional and sociocultural varieties. "General Australian" describes the de facto standard dialect, which is perceived to be free of pronounced regional or sociocultural markers and is often used in the media.

The earliest Australian English was spoken by the first generation of native-born colonists in the Colony of New South Wales from the end of the 18th century. These native-born children were exposed to a wide range of dialects from across the British Isles. Similar to early American English, the process of dialect levelling and koineisation which ensued produced a relatively homogeneous new variety of English which was easily understood by all. Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales described the distinctive accent and vocabulary that had developed among the native-born colonists.

The dialects of South East England, including most notably the traditional Cockney dialect of London, were particularly influential on the development of the new variety and constituted "the major input of the various sounds that went into constructing" Australian English. All the other regions of England were represented among the early colonists. A large proportion of early convicts and colonists were from Ireland, and spoke Irish as a sole or first language. They were joined by other non-native speakers of English from Scotland and Wales.

The first of the Australian gold rushes in the 1850s began a large wave of immigration, during which about two percent of the population of the United Kingdom emigrated to the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. The Gold Rushes brought immigrants and linguistic influences from many parts of the world. An example was the introduction of vocabulary from American English, including some terms later considered to be typically Australian, such as bushwhacker and squatter. This American influence was continued with the popularity of American films from the early 20th century and the influx of American military personnel during World War II; seen in the enduring persistence of such universally-accepted terms as and guys.

The publication of Edward Ellis Morris's Austral English: A Dictionary Of Australasian Words, Phrases And Usages in 1898, which extensively catalogued Australian English vocabulary, started a wave of academic interest and codification during the 20th century which resulted in Australian English becoming established as an endonormative variety with its own internal norms and standards. This culminated in publications such as the 1981 first edition of the Macquarie Dictionary, a major English language dictionary based on Australian usage, and the 1988 first edition of The Australian National Dictionary, a historical dictionary documenting the history of Australian English vocabulary and idiom.

The most obvious way in which Australian English is distinctive from other varieties of English is through its unique pronunciation. It shares most similarity with New Zealand English. Like most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by the phonetic quality of its vowels.

Australian English monophthongs[15]

Part 1 of Australian English diphthongs[15]

Part 2 of Australian English diphthongs[15]

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 also present in some regional south-eastern dialects of the UK and eastern seaboard dialects in the US. An example of this feature is the distinction between ferry /ˈfeɹiː/ and fairy /ˈfeːɹiː/.

As with New Zealand English and General American English, the weak-vowel merger is complete in Australian English: unstressed /ɪ/ is merged into /ə/ ( schwa), unless it is followed by a velar consonant. Examples of this feature are the following pairings, which are pronounced identically in Australian English: Rosa's and roses, as well as Lennon and Lenin. Other examples are the following pairs, which rhyme in Australian English: abbott with rabbit, and dig it with bigot.

Most varieties of Australian English exhibit only a partial trap-bath split. The words bath, grass and can't are always pronounced with the "long" /aː/ of father. Throughout the majority of the country, the "flat" /æ/ of man is the dominant pronunciation for the a vowel in the following words: dance, advance, plant, example and answer. The exception is the state of South Australia, where a more advanced trap-bath split is found, and where the dominant pronunciation of all the preceding words incorporates the "long" /aː/ of father.

There is little variation in the sets of consonants used in different English dialects but there are variations in how these consonants are used. Australian English is no exception.

Australian English is uniformly non-rhotic; that is, the /ɹ/ sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. As with many non-rhotic dialects, can occur when a word that has a final ⟨r⟩ in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. An intrusive /ɹ/ may similarly be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have ⟨r⟩ in the spelling in certain environments, namely after the long vowel /oː/ and after word final /ə/. This can be heard in "law-r-and order", where an intrusive R is voiced between the AW and the A.

As with North American English, Intervocalic alveolar flapping is a feature of Australian English: prevocalic /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar tap [ɾ] after sonorants other than /m,ŋ/ as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel in the same breath group. Examples of this feature are that the following pairs are pronounced similarly or identically: latter and ladder, as well as rated and raided.

In common with most varieties of Scottish English and American English, the phoneme /l/ is pronounced by older Australians as a "dark" (velarised) l ([ɫ]) in almost all positions, unlike other dialects such as Received Pronunciation, Hiberno (Irish) English and most Australians from the Millennial generation onwards, where a light l (i.e. a non-velarised l) is used in many positions.

The wine-whine merger is complete in Australian English.[dubious ]

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 (/ˈnesəseɹiː,ˈmalbeɹiː,ˈmætɹəməʉniː/) or a schwa (/ˈnesəsəɹiː,ˈmalbəɹiː,ˈmætɹəməniː/). 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 as is typical in British English. Meanwhile, 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, so that fertile /ˈfɜːtɑɪl/ sounds like fur tile rather than rhyming with turtle /ˈtɜːtəl/.

In addition, miscellaneous pronunciation differences exist when compared with other varieties of English in relation to various isolated words, with some of those pronunciations being unique to Australian English. For example:

As with American English, the vowel in yoghurt /ˈjəʉɡət/ and the prefix homo- /ˈhəʉməʉ/ (as in homosexual or homophobic) are pronounced with GOAT rather than LOT;

Vitamin, migraine and privacy are all pronounced with /ɑɪ/ in the stressed syllable (/ˈvɑɪtəmən,ˈmɑɪɡɹæɪn,ˈpɹɑɪvəsiː/) rather than /ˈvɪtəmən,ˈmiːɡɹæɪn,ˈpɹɪvəsiː/;

Dynasty and patronise, by contrast, are usually subject to trisyllabic laxing (/ˈdɪnəstiː,ˈpætrɔnɑɪz/) like in Britain, alongside US-derived /ˈdɑɪnəstiː,ˈpæɪtrɔnɑɪz/;

The prefix paedo- (as in paedophile) is pronounced /ˈpedəʉ/ rather than /ˈpiːdəʉ/;

In loanwords, the vowel spelled with ⟨a⟩ is often nativized as the PALM vowel (/aː/), as in American English, rather than the TRAP vowel (/æ/), as in British English. For example, pasta is pronounced /ˈpaːstə/, analogous to American English /ˈpɑstə/, rather than /ˈpæstə/, as in British English.

Urinal is stressed on the first syllable and with the schwa for I: /ˈjʉːɹənəl/;

Harass and harassment are pronounced with the stress on the second, rather than the first syllable;

The word foyer is pronounced /ˈfoɪə/, rather than /ˈfoɪæɪ/;

Tomato, vase and data are pronounced with /aː/ instead of /æɪ/: /təˈmaːtəʉ,vaːz,ˈdaːtə/, with /ˈdæɪtə/ being uncommon but acceptable;

Zebra and leisure are pronounced /ˈzebɹə/ and /ˈleʒə/ rather than /ˈziːbɹə/ and /ˈliːʒə/, both having disyllabic laxing;

Status varies between British-derived /ˈstæɪtəs/ with the FACE vowel and American-derived /ˈstætəs/ with the TRAP vowel;

Conversely, precedence, precedent and derivatives are mainly pronounced with the FLEECE vowel in the stressed syllable, rather than DRESS: /ˈpɹiːsədəns~pɹiːˈsiːdəns,ˈpɹiːsədənt/;

Basil is pronounced /ˈbæzəl/, rather than /ˈbæɪzəl/;

Conversely, cache is usually pronounced /kæɪʃ/, rather than the more conventional /kæʃ/;

Buoy is pronounced as /boɪ/ (as in boy) rather than /ˈbʉːiː/;

The E in congress and progress is not reduced: /ˈkɔnɡɹes,ˈpɹəʉɡɹes/;

Conversely, the unstressed O in silicon, phenomenon and python stands for a schwa: /ˈsɪlɪkən,fəˈnɔmənən,ˈpɑɪθən/;

In Amazon, Lebanon, marathon and pantheon, however, the unstressed O stands for the LOT vowel, somewhat as with American English: /ˈæməzɔn,ˈlebənɔn,ˈmæɹəθɔn,ˈpænθæɪɔn/;

The colour name maroon is pronounced with the GOAT vowel: /məˈɹəʉn/.

Relative to many other national dialect groupings, Australian English is relatively homogeneous across the country. Some relatively minor regional differences in pronunciation exist. A limited range of word choices is strongly regional in nature. Consequently, the geographical background of individuals may be inferred if they use words that are peculiar to particular Australian states or territories and, in some cases, even smaller regions. In addition, some Australians speak creole languages derived from Australian English, such as Australian Kriol, Torres Strait Creole and Norfuk.

Academic research has also identified notable sociocultural variation within Australian English, which is mostly evident in phonology.

Although Australian English is relatively homogeneous, there are some regional variations. The dialects of English spoken in the various states and territories of Australia differ slightly in vocabulary and phonology.

Most regional differences are in word usage. Swimming clothes are known as cossies /ˈkɔziːz/ or swimmers in New South Wales, togs in Queensland, and bathers in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia. What Queensland calls a stroller is usually called a pram in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales, and Tasmania.

Preference for some synonymous words also differ between states. Garbage (i.e., garbage bin, garbage truck) dominates over rubbish in New South Wales and Queensland, while rubbish is more popular in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.

Additionally, the word footy generally refers to the most popular football code in an area; that is, rugby league or rugby union depending on the local area, in most of New South Wales and Queensland, and Australian rules football elsewhere. In some pockets of Melbourne & Western Sydney 'football' and more rarely 'footy' will refer to Association football. Beer glasses are also named differently in different states. Distinctive grammatical patterns exist such as the use of the interrogative eh (also spelled ay or aye), which is particularly associated with Queensland. Secret Santa () and Kris Kringle are used in all states, with the former being more common in Queensland.

The most pronounced variation in phonology is between South Australia and the other states and territories. The trap-bath split is more complete in South Australia, in contrast to the other states. Accordingly, words such as dance, advance, plant, example and answer are pronounced with /aː/ (as in father) far more frequently in South Australia while the older /æ/ (as in mad) is dominant elsewhere in Australia. L-vocalisation is also more common in South Australia than other states.

In Western Australian and Queensland English, the vowels in near and square are typically realised as centring diphthongs ([nɪə,skweə]), whereas in the other states they may also be realised as monophthongs: [nɪː,skweː].

A feature common in Victorian English is salary-celery merger, whereby a Victorian pronunciation of Ellen may sound like Alan and Victoria's capital city may sound like Malbourne to speakers from other states. There is also regional variation in /ʉː/ before /l/ (as in school and pool).

In some parts of Australia, notably Victoria, a fully backed allophone of /ʉː/, transcribed [ʊː], is common before /l/. As a result, the pairs full/fool and pull/pool differ phonetically only in vowel length for those speakers. The usual allophone for /ʉː/ is further forward in Queensland and New South Wales than Victoria.

The General Australian accent serves as the standard variety of English across the country. According to linguists, it emerged during the 19th century. General Australian is the dominant variety across the continent, and is particularly so in urban areas. The increasing dominance of General Australian reflects its prominence on radio and television since the latter half of the 20th century.

Recent generations have seen a comparatively smaller proportion of the population speaking with the Broad sociocultural variant, which differs from General Australian in its phonology. The Broad variant is found across the continent and is relatively more prominent in rural and outer-suburban areas.

A largely historical Cultivated sociocultural variant, which adopted features of British Received Pronunciation and which was commonplace in official media during the early 20th century, had become largely extinct by the onset of the 21st century.

Australian Aboriginal English is made up of a range of forms which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and are said to vary along a continuum, from forms close to Standard Australian English to more non-standard forms. There are distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use.

Academics have noted the emergence of numerous ethnocultural dialects of Australian English that are spoken by people from some minority non-English speaking backgrounds. These ethnocultural varieties contain features of General Australian English as adopted by the children of immigrants blended with some non-English language features, such as Afro-Asiatic languages and languages of Asia. Samoan English is also influencing Australian English. Other ethnolects include those of Lebanese and Vietnamese Australians.

A high rising terminal in Australian English was noted and studied earlier than in other varieties of English. The feature is sometimes called Australian questioning intonation. Research published in 1986, regarding vernacular speech in Sydney, suggested that high rising terminal was initially spread by young people in the 1960s. It found that the high rising terminal was used more than twice as often by young people than older people, and is more common among women than men. In the United Kingdom, it has occasionally been considered one of the variety's stereotypical features, and its spread there is attributed to the popularity of Australian soap operas.

Bush poets such as Banjo Paterson captured the Australian vocabulary of the 19th century in their bush ballads

Australian English has many words and idioms which are unique to the dialect.

Internationally well-known examples of Australian terminology include , meaning a remote, sparsely populated area, , meaning either a native forest or a country area in general, and g'day, a greeting. Dinkum, or fair dinkum means "true" or "is that true?", among other things, depending on context and inflection. The derivative dinky-di means "true" or devoted: a "dinky-di Aussie" is a "true Australian".

Australian poetry, such as " The Man from Snowy River", as well as folk songs such as " Waltzing Matilda", contain many historical Australian words and phrases that are understood by Australians even though some are not in common usage today.

Australian English, in common with British English, uses the word to mean , as well as the word as a mild expletive or intensifier.

Several words used by Australians were at one time used in the UK but have since fallen out of usage or changed in meaning there. For example, creek in Australia, as in North America, means a stream or small river, whereas in the UK it is typically a watercourse in a marshy area; paddock in Australia means field, whereas in the UK it means a small enclosure for livestock; bush or scrub in Australia, as in North America, means a wooded area, whereas in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs).

Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been adopted by Australian English-mainly as names for places, flora and fauna (for example dingo) and local culture. Many such are localised, and do not form part of general Australian use, while others, such as kangaroo, boomerang, budgerigar, wallaby and so on have become international. Other examples are and hard yakka. The former is used as a high-pitched call, for attracting attention, (pronounced /ˈkʉːiː/) which travels long distances. Cooee is also a notional distance: "if he's within cooee, we'll spot him". Hard yakka means "hard work" and is derived from yakka, from the Jagera/Yagara language once spoken in the Brisbane region.

The word bung, meaning "dead" was originally a Yagara which was used in the pidgin widely spoken across Australia.

Many towns or suburbs of Australia have also been influenced or named after Aboriginal words. The best-known example is the capital, Canberra, named after a local Ngunnawal language word thought to mean "women's breasts" or "meeting place".

Litotes, such as "not bad", "not much" and "you're not wrong", are also used.

Diminutives and hypocorisms are common and are often used to indicate familiarity. Some common examples are arvo (afternoon), barbie (barbecue), (cigarette break), (Australian) and Straya (Australia). This may also be done with people's names to create nicknames (other English speaking countries create similar diminutives). For example, "Gazza" from Gary, or "Smitty" from John Smith. The use of the suffix -o originates in Irish: ó, which is both a postclitic and a suffix with much the same meaning as in Australian English.

In informal speech, incomplete comparisons are sometimes used, such as "sweet as" (as in "That car is sweet as."). "Full", "fully" or "heaps" may precede a word to act as an intensifier (as in "The waves at the beach were heaps good."). This was more common in regional Australia and South Australia but has been in common usage in urban Australia for decades. The suffix "-ly" is sometimes omitted in broader Australian English. For instance, "really good" can become "real good".

Australia's switch to the metric system in the 1970s changed most of the country's vocabulary of measurement from imperial to metric measures. Since the switch to metric, heights of individuals are listed in centimetres on official documents and distances by road on signs are listed in terms of kilometres and metres.

Where British and American English vocabulary differs, sometimes Australian English shares a usage with one of those varieties, as with petrol (AmE: gasoline) and mobile phone (AmE: cellular phone) which are shared with British English, or truck (BrE: lorry) and (BrE: aubergine) which are shared with American English.

In other circumstances, Australian English sometimes favours a usage which is different from both British and American English as with:

Differences exist between Australian English and other varieties of English, where different terms can be used for the same subject or the same term can be ascribed different meanings. Non-exhaustive examples of terminology associated with food, transport and clothing is used below to demonstrate the variations which exist between Australian English and other varieties:

Food - capsicum (BrE: (red/green) pepper; AmE: bell pepper); (potato) chips (refers both to BrE crisps and AmE French fries); chook (sanga) (BrE and AmE: chicken (sandwich)); coriander (shared with BrE. AmE: cilantro); entree (refers to AmE appetizer whereas AmE entree is referred to in AusE as main course); eggplant (shared with AmE. BrE: aubergine); fairy floss (BrE: candy floss; AmE: cotton candy); ice block or icy pole (BrE: ice lolly; AmE: popsicle); jelly (refers to AmE Jell-o whereas AmE jelly refers to AusE jam); lollies (BrE: sweets; AmE: candy); marinara (sauce) (refers to a tomato-based sauce in AmE and BrE but a seafood sauce in AusE); mince or minced meat (shared with BrE. AmE: ground meat); prawn (which in BrE refers to large crustaceans only, with small crustaceans referred to as shrimp. AmE universally: shrimp); snow pea (shared with AmE. BrE mangetout); pumpkin (AmE: squash, except for the large orange variety - AusE squash refers only to a small number of uncommon species; BrE: marrow); tomato sauce (also used in BrE. AmE: ketchup); zucchini (shared with AmE. BrE: courgette)

Transport - aeroplane (shared with BrE. AmE: airplane); bonnet (shared with BrE. AmE: hood); bumper (shared with BrE. AmE: fender); car park (shared with BrE. AmE: parking lot); convertible (shared with AmE. BrE: cabriolet); footpath (BrE: pavement; AmE: sidewalk); horse float (BrE: horsebox; AmE: horse trailer); indicator (shared with BrE. AmE: turn signal); peak hour (BrE and AmE: rush hour); petrol (shared with BrE. AmE: gasoline); railway (shared with BrE. AmE: railroad); sedan (car) (shared with AmE. BrE: saloon (car)); semitrailer (shared with AmE. BrE: artic or articulated lorry); station wagon (shared with AmE. BrE: estate car); truck (shared with AmE. BrE: lorry); ute (BrE and AmE: pickup truck); windscreen (shared with BrE. AmE: windshield)

There also exist words which in Australian English are ascribed different meanings from those ascribed in other varieties of English, for instance:

Asian in Australian (and American) English commonly refers to people of East Asian ancestry, while in British English it commonly refers to people of South Asian ancestry

Biscuit in Australian (and British) English refers to AmE cookie and cracker, while in American English it refers to a leavened bread product

(potato) Chips refers both to British English crisps (which is not commonly used in Australian English) and to American English French fries (which is used alongside hot chips)

Football in Australian English most commonly refers to Australian rules football, rugby league or rugby union. In British English, football is most commonly used to refer to association football, while in North American English football is used to refer to

Pants in Australian (and American) English most commonly refers to British English trousers, but in British English refers to Australian English underpants

Nursery in Australian English generally refers to a plant nursery, whereas in British English and American English it also often refers to a child care or daycare for pre-school age children[citation needed ]

Paddock in Australian English refers to an open field or meadow whereas in American and British English it refers to a small agricultural enclosure

Premier in Australian English refers specifically to the head of government of an Australian state, whereas in British English it is used interchangeably with Prime Minister

Public school in Australian (and American) English refers to a state school. Australian and American English use private school to mean a non-government or independent school, in contrast with British English which uses public school to refer to the same thing

Pudding in Australian (and American) English refers to a particular sweet dessert dish, while in British English it often refers to dessert (the food course) in general

Thongs in Australian English refer to British and American English flip-flop (footwear), whereas in both American and British English it refers to Australian English (underwear) (in Australian English the singular "thong" can refer to one half of a pair of the footwear or to a G-string, so care must be taken as to context)

Vest in Australian (and American) English refers to a padded upper garment or British English waistcoat but in British English refers to Australian English singlet

In addition to the large number of uniquely Australian idioms in common use, there are instances of idioms taking different forms in Australian English than in other varieties, for instance:

A drop in the ocean (shared with BrE usage) as opposed to AmE a drop in the bucket

A way to go (shared with BrE usage) as opposed to AmE a ways to go

Home away from home (shared with AmE usage) as opposed to BrE home from home

Take (something) with a grain of salt (shared with AmE usage) as opposed to UK take with a pinch of salt

Touch wood (shared with BrE usage) as opposed to AmE knock on wood

Wouldn't touch (something) with a ten-foot pole (shared with AmE usage) as opposed to BrE wouldn't touch with a barge pole

There are extensive terms used in other varieties of English which are not widely used in Australian English. These terms usually do not result in Australian English speakers failing to comprehend speakers of other varieties of English, as Australian English speakers will often be familiar with such terms through exposure to media or may ascertain the meaning using context.

Non-exhaustive selections of British English and American English terms not commonly used in Australian English together with their definitions or Australian English equivalents are found in the collapsible table below:

British English terms not widely used in Australian English

American English terms not widely used in Australian English

The general rules of English Grammar which apply to Australian English are described at English grammar. Grammatical differences between varieties of English are minor relative to differences in phonology and vocabulary and do not generally affect intelligibility. Examples of grammatical differences between Australian English and other varieties include:

Collective nouns are generally singular in construction, e.g., the government was unable to decide as opposed to the government were unable to decide or the group was leaving as opposed to the group were leaving. This is in common with American English.

Australian English has an extreme distaste for the modal verbs shall (in non-legal contexts), shan't and ought (in place of will, won't and should respectively), which are encountered in British English. However, shall is found in the Australian Constitution, Acts of Parliament, and other formal or legal documents such as contracts.

Using should with the same meaning as would, e.g. I should like to see you, encountered in British English, is almost never encountered in Australian English.

River follows the name of the river in question, e.g., Brisbane River, rather than the British convention of coming before the name, e.g., River Thames. This is also the case in North American and New Zealand English. In South Australian English however, the reverse applies when referring to the following three rivers: Murray, Darling and Torrens. The Derwent in Tasmania also follows this convention.

While prepositions before days may be omitted in American English, i.e., She resigned Thursday, they are retained in Australian English: She resigned on Thursday. This is shared with British English.

The institutional nouns hospital and university do not take the definite article: She's in hospital, He's at university. This is in contrast to American English where the is required: In the hospital, At the university.

On the weekend is used in favour of the British at the weekend which is not encountered in Australian English.

Ranges of dates use to, i.e., Monday to Friday, rather than Monday through Friday. This is shared with British English and is in contrast to American English.

When speaking or writing out numbers, and is always inserted before the tens, i.e., one hundred and sixty-two rather than one hundred sixty-two. This is in contrast to American English, where the insertion of and is acceptable but nonetheless either casual or informal.

The preposition to in write to (e.g. "I'll write to you") is always retained, as opposed to American usage where it may be dropped.

Australian English does not share the British usage of read (v) to mean "study" (v). Therefore, it may be said that "He studies medicine" but not that "He reads medicine".

When referring to time, Australians will refer to 10:30 as half past ten and do not use the British half ten. Similarly, a quarter to ten is used for 9:45 rather than (a) quarter of ten, which is sometimes found in American English.

Australian English does not share the British English meaning of sat to include sitting or seated. Therefore, uses such as I've been sat here for an hour are not encountered in Australian English.

To have a shower or have a bath are the most common usages in Australian English, in contrast to American English which uses take a shower and take a bath.

The past participle of saw is sawn (e.g. sawn-off shotgun) in Australian English, in contrast to the American English sawed.

The verb visit is transitive in Australian English. Where the object is a person or people, American English also uses visit with, which is not found in Australian English.

An outdoor event which is cancelled due to inclement weather is rained out in Australian English. This is in contrast to British English where it is said to be rained off.

In informal speech, sentence-final but may be used, e.g. "I don't want to go but" in place of "But I don't want to go". This is also found in Scottish English.

In informal speech, the discourse markers yeah no (or yeah nah) and no yeah (or nah yeah) may be used to mean "no" and "yes" respectively.

As in all English-speaking countries, there is no central authority that prescribes official usage with respect to matters of spelling, grammar, punctuation or style.

There are several dictionaries of Australian English which adopt a descriptive approach. The Macquarie Dictionary is most commonly used by universities, governments and courts as the standard for Australian English spelling. The Australian Oxford Dictionary is another commonly-used dictionary of Australian English.

Australian spelling is significantly closer to British than American spelling, as it did not adopt the systematic reforms promulgated in Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary. Notwithstanding, the Macquarie Dictionary often lists most American spellings as acceptable secondary variants.

The minor systematic differences which occur between Australian and American spelling are summarised below:

A double-consonant l is retained in Australian English when adding suffixes to words ending in l where the consonant is unstressed, contrary to American English. Therefore, Australian English favours cancelled, counsellor, and travelling over American canceled, counselor and traveling.

In contrast with American English, which uses practice and license for both nouns and verbs, practice and licence are nouns while practise and license are verbs in Australian English.

Words with ae and oe are often maintained in words such as oestrogen and paedophilia, in contrast to the American English practice of using e alone (as in estrogen and pedophilia). The Macquarie Dictionary has noted a shift within Australian English towards using e alone, and now lists some words such as encyclopedia, fetus, eon or hematite with the e spelling as the preferred variant and hence Australian English varies by word when it comes to these sets of words.

Minor systematic difference which occur between Australian and British spelling are as follows:

Words often ending in eable in British English end in able in Australian English. Therefore, Australian English favours livable over liveable, sizable over sizeable, movable over moveable, etc., although both variants are acceptable.

Words often ending in eing in British English end in ing in Australian English. Therefore, Australian English favours aging over ageing, or routing over routeing, etc., although both variants are acceptable.

Words often ending in mme in British English end in m in Australian English. Therefore, Australian English favours program over programme (in all contexts) and aerogram over aerogramme, although both variants are acceptable. Similar to Canada, New Zealand and the United States, (kilo)gram is the only spelling.

Other examples of individual words where the preferred spelling is listed by the Macquarie Dictionary as being different from current British spellings include analog as opposed to analogue, guerilla as opposed to guerrilla, verandah as opposed to veranda, burqa as opposed to burka, pastie (noun) as opposed to pasty, neuron as opposed to neurone, hicup as opposed to hicough, annex as opposed to annexe, raccoon as opposed to racoon etc. Unspaced forms such as onto, anytime, alright and anymore are also listed as being equally as acceptable as their spaced counterparts.

There is variation between and within varieties of English in the treatment of -t and -ed endings for past tense verbs. The Macquarie Dictionary does not favour either, but it suggests that leaped, leaned or learned (with -ed endings) are more common but spelt and burnt (with -t endings) are more common.

Different spellings have existed throughout Australia's history. What are today regarded as American spellings were popular in Australia throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the Victorian Department of Education endorsing them into the 1970s and newspaper until the 1990s. This influence can be seen in the spelling of the Australian Labor Party and also in some place names such as Victor Harbor. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary has been credited with re-establishing the dominance of the British spellings in the 1920s and 1930s. For a short time during the late 20th century, Harry Lindgren's 1969 spelling reform proposal (Spelling Reform 1 or SR1) gained some support in Australia and was adopted by the Australian Teachers' Federation.

Prominent general style guides for Australian English include the Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage, the Australian Government Style Manual (formerly the Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers), the Australian Handbook for Writers and Editors and the Complete Guide to English Usage for Australian Students.

Both single and double quotation marks are in use, with single quotation marks preferred for use in the first instance, with double quotation marks reserved for quotes of speech within speech. Logical (as opposed to typesetter's) punctuation is preferred for punctuation marks at the end of quotations. For instance, Sam said he 'wasn't happy when Jane told David to "go away"'. is used in preference to Sam said he "wasn't happy when Jane told David to 'go away.'"

The DD/MM/YYYY date format is followed and the 12-hour clock is generally used in everyday life (as opposed to service, police, and airline applications).

With the exception of screen sizes, metric units are used in everyday life, having supplanted imperial units upon the country's switch to the metric system in the 1970s, although imperial units persist in casual references to a person's height. Tyre and bolt sizes (for example) are defined in imperial units where appropriate for technical reasons.

In betting, decimal odds are used in preference to fractional odds, as used in the United Kingdom, or moneyline odds in the United States.

There are two major English language keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout. Keyboards and keyboard software for the Australian market universally uses the US keyboard layout, which lacks the pound (£), euro and negation symbols and uses a different layout for punctuation symbols from the UK keyboard layout.

1. ^ English (Australia) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)

2. ^ "2021 Australia, Census All persons QuickStats | Australian Bureau of Statistics".

3. ^

4. Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. (2002). ^ International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-80834-9, p. 4.

5. ^ Harrington, J.; F. Cox & Z. Evans (1997). "An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian English vowels". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 17 (2): 155-84. doi:10.1080/07268609708599550.

6. ^ Cox, Felicity; Fletcher, Janet (2017) [First published 2012], Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-316-63926-9

7. ^ Mannell, Robert (14 August 2009). "Australian English - Impressionistic Phonetic Studies". Clas.mq.edu.au. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011.

8. ^ Mannell, Robert (14 August 2009). "Robert Mannell, "Impressionistic Studies of Australian English Phonetics"". Ling.mq.edu.au. Archived from the original on 31 December 2008.

9. ^ Pauline Bryant (1985): Regional variation in the Australian English lexicon, Australian Journal of Linguistics, 5:1, 55-66

10. Bruce Moore (Australian Oxford Dictionary) and Felicity Cox (Macquarie University) [interviewed in]: ^ Sounds of Aus (television documentary) 2007; director: David Swann; Writer: Lawrie Zion, Princess Pictures (broadcaster: ABC Television).

11. ^ "Australia's unique and evolving sound". Archived from the original on 27 September 2009. Edition 34, 2007 (23 August 2007) - The Macquarie Globe

12. ^ "Reference at www.abc.net.au". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. [dead link ]

13. ^ Guy, G.; Horvath, B.; Vonwiller, J.; Daisley, E.; Rogers, I. (1986). "An intonational change in progress in Australian English". Language in Society. 15: 23-52. doi:10.1017/s0047404500011635. ISSN 0047-4045. S2CID 146425401.

14. ^ Stokel-Walker, Chris (11 August 2014). "The unstoppable march of the upward inflection?". BBC News.

15. ^ "Frederick Ludowyk, 1998, "Aussie Words: The Dinkum Oil On Dinkum; Where Does It Come From?" (0zWords, Australian National Dictionary Centre)". Archived from the original on 16 March 2011.. Access date: 5 November 2007.

16. ^ Ludowyk, Frederick (October 2004). "Aussie Words: Of Billy, Bong, Bung, & 'Billybong'" (PDF). Ozwords. 11 (2). Australian National Dictionary Centre: 7 - via Australian National University. Also here

17. ^ "Canberra Facts and figures". Archived from the original on 9 November 2012.

18. ^ Frei, Patricia. "Discussion on the Meaning of 'Canberra'". Canberra History Web. Patricia Frei. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013.

19. ^ Astle, David (12 March 2021). "Why do Aussies shorten everything an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bit?". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 31 March 2022.

20. ^ Wilks, Kevin (1992). Metrication in Australia: A review of the effectiveness of policies and procedures in Australia's conversion to the metric system (PDF). Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. p. 114. ISBN 0-644-24860-2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Measurements used by people in their private lives, in conversation or in estimation of sizes had not noticeably changed nor was such a change even attempted or thought necessary.

21. "The Macquarie Dictionary", Fourth Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 2005.

22. "The Macquarie Dictionary", Fourth Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 2005. Note: Entries with Chiefly British usage note in the Macquarie Dictionary and reference to corresponding Australian entry.

23. The Macquarie Dictionary, Fourth Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 2005. Note: Entries with Chiefly US usage note in the Macquarie Dictionary and reference to corresponding Australian entry.

24. Collins, Peter (2012). "Australian English: Its Evolution and Current State". International Journal of Language, Translation and Intercultural Communication. 1: 75. doi:10.12681/ijltic.11.

25. ^ "The Macquarie Dictionary", Fourth Edition. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, 2005

26. ^ "Collins English Dictionary", 13th Edition. HarperCollins, 2018

27. ^ "The Macquarie Dictionary", 8th Edition. Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, 2020.

28. ^ "Spelling Reform 1 - And Nothing Else!". Archived from the original on 30 July 2012.

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Australian English ( AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and de facto national language; while Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the national language since British settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians.

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Immigration history of Australia - Wikipedia

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The immigration history of Australia began with the initial human migration to the continent around 50,000 years ago when the ancestors of Australian Aborigines arrived on the continent via the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and New Guinea. From the early 17th century onwards, the continent experienced the first coastal landings and exploration by European explorers.

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Australia's migration history
The nineteenth century
In 1788, when European settlement began, Australia's Aboriginal population was about 400,000. Today, over 20 million people live here. Migration has been the main driver for this change. In New South Wales, four out of every ten people are either migrants or the children of migrants.

Clearly Australia has a rich migration history. However attitudes to migration and particularly to the ideal source of migrants have changed considerably over these 218 years. The first migrants were decidedly involuntary, the convicts transported from Britain, Ireland and, to a lesser degree, other British colonies. Altogether 80,000 arrived in New South Wales between 1788 and 1840. From the 1830s they were joined by small numbers of voluntary migrants, again principally from Britain and Ireland. Some came under their own resources, others with assistance from one of the public or private schemes then available.

However, with the discovery of gold just outside Bathurst in 1851, the nature of Australian migration changed completely. People arrived in far greater numbers and from more varied backgrounds than ever before. Between 1851 and 1861 over 600,000 came and while the majority were from Britain and Ireland, 60,000 came from Continental Europe, 42,000 from China, 10,000 from the United States and just over 5,000 from New Zealand and the South Pacific. Although Australia never again saw such a rush of new immigrants, the heightened interest in settling here remained. By the time of Federation the total population was close to four million of whom one in four was born overseas. Many had been given assisted passages. Whilst the majority were of British or Irish extraction, there were significant numbers of Europeans, particularly Germans, and Chinese.
The infamous 'White Australia' policy: keeping Australia British
When the colonies federated in 1901, control of immigration changed. Instead of each colony managing its own system, the Commonwealth now oversaw recruiting and selection. Assisted passages were offered to encourage migration with priority still being given to the British and Irish. Despite comparatively large numbers of Chinese residents in Australia, the first legislation passed by the new parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act. Often referred to as the 'White Australia policy' this effectively banned Asian migration for the next fifty years. That same year the Federal Parliament passed the Pacific Islands Labourers Act to prohibit their employment as contract labourers and to deport those already here.

In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, migration almost ceased. Furthermore, some migrants from countries previously thought acceptable were now reclassified as 'enemy aliens'. Those born in Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria and Turkey faced internment or general restrictions on their daily lives. Altogether about 7,000 people were interned, with camps in New South Wales at Berrima, Trial Bay and Liverpool. After the war, the 1901 Immigration Act was extended to ban people from these countries for five years. The ban on Turkish people was not lifted until 1930.

With the 1918 peace came a revival of assisted migration schemes. The British Government offered ex-servicemen free passage to one of the dominions or colonies and 17,000 arrived in Australia between 1919 and 1922. Church and community organisations such as the YMCA and the Salvation Army sponsored migrants. Small numbers also arrived independently. As the United States sought to limit migration of Southern Europeans, increasing numbers of young men from Greece and Italy paid their own way to Australia. By the 1930s, Jewish settlers began arriving in greater numbers, many of them refugees from Hitler's Europe. However the 1929 stockmarket crash and the Great Depression put an end to sponsored migration and it was not until Australia had again fought a war that it was resumed.

Just as in the First World War, with the outbreak of the Second World War previously acceptable migrants - Germans, Italians, Japanese and Hungarians - were reclassified 'enemy aliens' and interned or kept under close police surveillance. No distinction was made on the basis of political sympathies. Thus, a large group of Jewish refugees that arrived on the Dunera in September 1940 were interned first at Hay in New South Wales, and later at Tatura in Victoria.
'Populate or perish': post war migration
When the war ended, the government took an entirely new approach to migration. The near invasion of Australia by the Japanese caused a complete rethink of ideal population numbers. As Prime Minister Ben Chifley would later declare, 'a powerful enemy looked hungrily toward Australia. In tomorrow's gun flash that threat could come again. We must populate Australia as rapidly as we can before someone else decides to populate it for us.' In 1945, the Department of Immigration was established, headed up by Arthur Calwell. It resolved that Australia should have annual population growth of two per cent, of which only half could come from natural increase. 70,000 immigrants a year were needed to make up the difference.

However, although the government wanted the majority to be Anglo Celtic - and Arthur Calwell declared 'It is my hope that for every foreign migrant there will be 10 people from the United Kingdom' in fact the British Government was both unable and unwilling to meet such a high target. At the same time, some 11 million people had survived the Nazi labour and concentration camps and many, particularly Poles, Yugoslavs, Latvians, Ukrainians and Hungarians, were unable or unwilling to return home. Visiting Europe in 1947, Calwell therefore agreed to accept a minimum of 12,000 of these refugees a year.

On 28 November 1947, the first Displaced Persons - 844 young Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians - arrived on the General Heintzelman in Melbourne and were transferred to Bonegilla migration hostel. In exchange for free passage and assistance on their arrival, they agreed to work for the government for two years.

During the seven years this scheme operated, nearly 171,000 arrived. When this source came to an end, the Federal Government negotiated a series of migration agreements including with the Netherlands and Italy (1951), Austria, Belgium, West Germany, Greece and Spain (1952), and the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland (1954). In these immediate post war years Australia was second only to Israel in the proportion of migrants accepted. As a result, Australian society became markedly less British and Irish in character. At the 1961 census, eight per cent of the population was non-British in origin with the largest group being Italians followed by Germans, Greeks and Poles.

Most migrants arrived by ship, disembarking in major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. From there they were immediately taken to migration hostels in rural areas, often in former military barracks. With accommodation fashioned from old corrugated iron Nissen huts, migrants were frequently shocked at the primitive conditions. With men and women separated into single sex barracks, shared bathrooms and kitchens and a communal dining room serving unfamiliar, and often unpalatable food, migration hostels were neither comfortable nor welcoming. The intention was that migrants stay only four to six weeks until they could be resettled near their workplace. At times however work was difficult to find and some stayed for months if not years. Improvements were slow in coming. In 1969 family units opened at Villawood and migrants no longer had to share facilities. Yet, as one Polish immigrant who arrived there in 1975 remarked, 'For the first time in my life I had a room to myself'. Some things had not changed, as to food, 'After one week there we'd had enough'.

All assisted migrants aged over 16 had to work. Regardless of qualifications men were classified as labourers and women as domestics. One of the largest employers was the Snowy Mountain Scheme. Australia's largest post war project, this diverted the course of the Snowy and Tumut Rivers to provide irrigation and generate hydro-electricity. The work was hard, dangerous and meant men lived for months in isolated and primitive camps. Other migrants found work in factories, in the burgeoning iron and steel industries, on the railways and in mines.

Although the official government policy was that migrants should assimilate into Australia's Anglo Celtic culture, many celebrated their origins through membership of clubs, sporting and religious organisations. For some such community organisations made a huge difference in overcoming a sense of isolation. For others it came when they had their own homes and families and could grow familiar fruits and vegetables and eat traditional foods.
From a 'White Australia' to multiculturalism
From the 1950s, Australia began to relax its 'White Australia' policy. In 1956 non-European residents were allowed to apply for citizenship. Two years later the Dictation Test was abolished as a further means of exclusion. By the 1960s mixed race migration was becoming easier and in 1967 Australia entered into its first migration agreement with a non-European country, in this case Turkey.

Then in 1972 Australians elected their first Labor government since 1948. As Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby radically changed official policy. The quota system, based on country of origin and preservation of racial 'homogeneity', was replaced by 'structured selection'. Migrants were to be chosen according to personal and social attributes and occupational group rather than country of origin. In 1973, declaring Australia a 'multicultural' society, Al Grassby announced that every relic of past ethnic or racial discrimination had been abolished. The Australian Citizenship Act of that year declared that all migrants were to be accorded equal treatment.

In 1975 the first of what would become known as 'boat people' arrived in Darwin. More than 25 000 arrived in the next thirty years, initially from East Timor and then from Vietnam, China and, most recently, the Middle East. All are subject to compulsory internment while their claims of refugee status are assessed. Although Australia has been criticised by the United Nations and Amnesty International for the injustice of interring all illegal migrants, particularly children, it continues to this day.

In 1988 the Fitzgerald Inquiry led to further changes in migration with a move away from 'family reunion' towards an emphasis on skilled and business categories. The assisted passage scheme had ended in 1981 and only refugees are given any level of support on their arrival in Australia. In 1996, for the first time in Australia's migration history, the number of British migrants arriving fell to second place behind New Zealand. Renewed prosperity in Europe has also meant that, where once Italians and Greeks made up the majority of non-British new arrivals, today, after New Zealand, it is people from China, South Africa and India. Conflicts overseas have also meant that Australia is now taking refugees from countries previously unrepresented. In 2006 the fastest growing refugee group is from Sudan followed by Afghanistan and Iraq.

i James Jupp, 62

iii Kate Walsh, The changing face of Australia: A century of immigration 1901-2000, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2001, 169

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Australia's migration history The nineteenth century In 1788, when European settlement began, Australia's Aboriginal population was about 400,000. Today, over 20 million people live here. Migration has been the main driver for this change. In New South Wales, four out of every ten people are either migrants or the children of migrants.