World Englishes Lecture 7

Australian English

‘..the fact remains that the common speech of the Commonwealth of Australia

represents the most brutal maltreatment that has ever been inflicted upon the mother

tongue of the great English speaking nations.’ (William Churchill, (1911) in Gorlach

1991:147)

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

Under the shade of a Coolibah tree

(Waltzing Matilda by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Patterson, 1895, cited in

Svartik and Leech, 2006, p. 102)

Overhead in a shop:

A. Emma Chisit

B. Pleased to meet you

A. Nah, Emma Chisit, the price, emma chisit?

B.. Oh, it’s $22 dollars

(Adapted from Lauder, 1982, )

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 He She

Water bat Well, I doan fee

Jars-chewr nigh Larp twit treely.
Goa I beenin
Natter teat night? Tair nawl die.
Jarssa touvers. Hair bat
Wicker deffer few drinxer Chew calmer nova
Nairn F. T. To mipe lice?
Wicked F. Teat
Mipe lice
(Lauder,1982, p. 13)

Translation:

He She

What about Well I don’t feel

Just you and I Up to it really
Going I’ve been in
Out to eat tonight Town all day
Just the two of us. How about
We could have a few drinks You coming over
And then have tea To my place
We could have tea at
My place

This lecture will look at the distinctive varieties of English that have

developed in Australia since English settlers first arrived in 1788. First

we’ll look at historical events that led to the development of the three

styles of Australian English already mentioned in previous lectures:

broad, general and educated. Then we’ll look at distinctive features of the

broad/general variety looking at the phonology (pronunciation and

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intonation), lexis, grammar, and morphology. And finally we’ll look at

the development of Aboriginal English. Although the effects of

immigrants from non-English speaking countries on Australian English

and society has been profound, this topic will not be developed in detail

in this lecture, and those interested, will be directed to references to

explore this topic further.

The English language arrived in Australia as a result of the expansion of

the British empire during the 18th century. Australia has been inhabited

by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for between 40-70,000

years or longer, in what can be considered the longest continuous living

set of cultures on Earth. But the English were not the first non-

indigenous people to arrive in the continent. Maccassin traders from

what is now known as the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia had been

trading with the Aborigines for centuries in the north of Australia, and the

Portuguese and Dutch ships had occasionally sailed and foundered on the

west Australian coast on their way to their colonies in Indonesia. But

none of these people established a colony or large permanent settlements

on the continent. It was only when James Cook’s expedition in 1768

claimed for Britain the area known as New Holland, which he renamed

New South Wales on the east coast of the continent, that British

settlement was made possible. 20 years later in 1788, 11 British ships

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with around 1000 people, three quarters of whom were convicts, arrived

at Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour. Over the next 80 years,

160,000 convicts were forced to serve their sentence in Australia, and

most ended up staying in Australia for the rest of their lives, because of

the lack of transport back to England. The English language had arrived

in Australia. But what kind of language was it? Scholars of Australian

English (AusE) agree that the pronunciation was largely similar to the

varieties of English from the south east of England, and was quite

different from the pronunciation found in the western and northern

regions of Britain. The majority of the settlers in Australia 40 years after

the arrival of the first fleet were convicts or ex convicts comprising

23,000 out of a total population of almost 31,000 (Borrie, 1994, in

Yallop, 2001) and many of them came from the urban centres of England

and Ireland including London and Dublin. It is thought that the working

class variety of English from London would have been the major dialect

amongst the convicts in Australia, and convicts from other areas of

Britain would have accommodated towards this dialect to some extent.

But it is the children born in Australia at this time who would have

modelled their speech on the most prominent dialect of the colony that

they heard, which was either the London variety itself or varieties from

other areas of Britain attempting to accommodate to the London variety

of the time. The broad Australian speech style of today has its origins

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with the speech of these children in the 1830s according to Mitchell (cited

in Yallop, 2001).

The more educated General Australian speech style, which is currently

the dominant speech style of most Australians, originated from the

increase in ‘free’ (non-convict) immigration from Britain after 1830. In

1837 the numbers of ‘free immigrants’ exceeded those of convict

immigrants and after that, free immigrants became the major source of

new arrivals. Many of these free immigrants included women and

families, leading to the establishment of a relatively more stable social

environment with relatively well educated immigrants involved in

commerce and trade, in contrast to the more unstable environments of the

gold rushes that were attracting single male immigrants at the time.

According to Mitchell (in Yallop, 2001), General Australian became the

majority speech style between 1870 and 1890. At this time, General

Australian would have coexisted with Broad Australian and would have

been seen as the new, urban, more prestigious variety. These views are

still held today to some extent with the Broad variety still associated with

rural, male speakers.

The Educated (also known as the Cultivated) variety of AusE developed

from the increasing attention paid to the education of children, beginning

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with a school established for the 36 children of the new colony in 1788,

17 of whom were children of convicts. The first private school was

established in Parramtta near Sydney in 1800 and during the 19 century

many more religious and nondenominational private schools were

established modelled on British private schools.

Education was seen to be a ‘civilising influence’ and English civilisation

and culture was held as the guiding model. However, according to Honey

(1989, in Yallop, 2001), RP was not associated with high culture and

power of the British upper classes and the educated until after 1870.

Before that, their speech styles reflected their regional backgrounds. It

was only in the late 19th century when English private schools began to

establish RP as a signifier of power and status amongst its pupils, and in

this process established this sociolect (a dialect reflecting social status

rather than regional background). So after Federation in 1901, when

many of those in powerful positions in England were speaking with an

RP accent, educated Australians began to accommodate to it and so

developed the Educated variety of AusE. During the First World War

1914-1918 Australian soldiers fought alongside British soldiers and in the

process of fighting for the British empire Australians identified strongly

with British culture including the RP accent. In the period after the First

World War elocution lessons became popular in schools in Australia, and

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elsewhere in British colonies and ex colonies (eg Zimbabwe, South

Africa). During these lessons, pupils were instructed to pronounce

English ‘correctly’, ie in an RP accent to mirror the Queen’s English. At

the same time many of the Australian soldiers fighting with the British

began to assert their Australian identity through emphasising the

differences in their accent. There was also a section of the Australian

population that couldn’t understand why Australians were fighting and

dying for the British, and sought to mark their Australian identity (usually

working class) in opposition to the Australian supporters of the British

Empire (mostly from the higher social classes). It is at this time in the

1930s that the image of the working class Australian male in the blue

singlet became popular.

As mentioned earlier, English civilisation and culture was held up as a

model to aspire to in the Australian education system, and England was

often referred to as the ‘mother country’. This led to a phenomenon

known as the ‘cultural cringe’, where any aspect of Australian culture

was deemed inferior to English or European culture, including Australian

art, music, and language. Many artists and intellectuals left Australia to

establish themselves in England or the US (eg Barry Humphries of

‘Dame Edna’ fame, Clive James, Robert Hughes, Rolf Harris, and

Germaine Greer) and the Australian accent was seen as inferior to RP.

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This was reflected in the voices of radio broadcasters and actors in

Australian films up to and including this period who used mostly RP

accents in their work. However in the 1970s, there was a shift in Anglo

Australian values and an increased pride in Anglo Australian identity and

markers of that identity, including distinctive features of the Australian

accent and language. This pride was and is reflected in the use of

distinctive Australian accents in television commercials (eg Paul Hogan -

‘Crocodile Dundee’s’ advertisements promoting Australia as a tourist

destination); and in Australian films (eg ‘The Adventures of Barry

McKenzie’ written by Barry Humphries, ‘Crododile Dundee’ etc). The

Australian accents of radio and television presenters became acceptable

and their speech styles now often varies according to the radio station and

the subject being covered eg a Broad accent for sports commentators

(especially Aussie Rules football), and an Educated speech style for

classical music programmes.

Australian speech styles do not vary much from one region of the country

to another as is the case in many other countries in the world. This is due

to the relatively recent emergence of AusE, the high mobility of the

Australian population in response to economic events such as discoveries

of gold (especially during the 19th century) and natural resources booms

(eg oil and gas in Western Australia at the moment), as well as, according

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to Blair (1993) a sense of national identity that overrides a sense of

regional identity.

However, in spite of the above, there are some small regional differences

in vocabulary. For example a small food and general goods shop, often

open after hours, is called a milk bar in New South Wales but is called a

deli (from delicatessen) in Western Australia; a drinking fountain in Perth

is called a bubbler in Sydney, and a rubbish bin in Perth is called a

garbage bin in Sydney and a dustbin in Melbourne and Adelaide (Collins

and Blair, 2001). Other words relating to flora and fauna and other

phenomena particular to certain regions will also vary. Bradley (1989)

also mentions that there are some phonological differences between

regions, eg the vowels /i, e, a/ are higher in Melbourne than in Sydney.

And Horvath and Horvath (2001) find that words like dance and advance

are pronounced with the /ae/ vowel sound (as in cat) rather than the /a/

sound (as in are) more in Brisbane than in Melbourne, and more in

Melbourne than in Sydney. But overall, Australian speech is almost

completely unmarked by region, rather it is marked socially and

ethnically.

Let’s look now at some of the characteristics of AusE, and we’ll begin by

looking at pronunciation and other phonological features like intonation.

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Mitchell and Delbridge’s (1965) large sociolinguistic study of the speech

of Australian adolescents, and Bernard’s (1967, 1970) acoustic analysis

of AusE vowels were the first major studies describing AusE

pronunciation in great detail, laying the foundations for further study in

this field. These researchers and others devised the continuum of AusE

speech divided into three types: Broad, General and Cultivated. The

following table represents vowel sounds in fairly Broad AusE compared

to British RP

RP AusE

say /seH/ say /saH/

good day mate /eH/ vowels g’day mate /aH/ vowels

(‘Let’s Talk Australian’) (‘Let’s talk Strine’)

now /naO/ now / nzO/ or /nDO/

ham /hzm/ ham /hDm/

pen /pen/ pen /pHn/

chatted /tRztHd/ chatted /tRzdəd/

chattered / tRztəd/ chattered / tRzdəd/

Although less obvious than the vowel sounds, some AusE consonants

differ to some extent from RP pronunciation (although show similarities

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to other varieties of AmE). For example the /t/ consonant is frequently

voiced and flapped before an unstressed syllable, as in ‘budder’ instead of

butter in RP, or buh’er /bU>ə/ (with the glottal stop replacing the /t/) in

some varieties of BrE. Glottalisation of /t/ in AusE (eg but /bU>/ , great,

/ graH>/) has been documented by scholars such as Haslerud (1995) who

describes it as a relatively recent, non-gender related, low prestige,

speech development. Another consonant, the /r/, is pronounced in AusE

as it is in standard BrE. Unlike AmE, the pronunciation is non-rhotic, that

is, the consonant is not sounded after vowels (eg bird, mother, where the

/r/ is not pronounced - see lecture 6). Initial /h/ is frequently dropped in

AusE, as in London Cockney eg ouse instead of house.

A characteristic of Australian intonation is the high rising tone that is

used not only for questions but also for statements especially in

conversations in which narratives and descriptive texts are being used. It

serves the purpose of eliciting feedback from the listener, to ensure their

participation, and also to indicate a certain humility in expression. It is

often used by young people and by females more than males.

Guy and Vonwiller (1989:22ff) give the following example of a teenage

girl speaking. The italics indicate where rising intonation is used.

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 ‘Oh, occasionally Mrs L_ used to blow up [get angry at] kids when

they hadn’t done anything. And once, a girl and I were walking

down the stairs, and she touched a doorknob or something, ‘cause

she didn’t realise what was wrong with it. And it fell off and she got

the cane for breaking it. And I know very well she hadn’t broken it.

And I tried to tell the teacher. The teacher was really mean you

know.’

Let’s move on to look at distinctive Australian lexis (words and

expressions). Look at the song Waltzing Matilda and pick out the

Australian terms used by Banjo Patterson. This song encapsulates certain

ideals said to be cherished by Australians such as ‘egalitarianism, and

anti-authoritarianism, sympathy for the battler [see below] and desire for

a fair go (Collins and Blair, 2001 p.3-4)

Susan Butler, the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary (in Blair and Collins

(Eds), 2001 English in Australia ) lists a number of distinctive Australian

words according to the following historical categories and points out how

AusE reflects Australian history. In this way it perpetuates certain myths

and ideals about Australian history and culture:

Colonial Period (1788-1890)

Pastoral terms

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Bloke manager of a sheep station (farm), later, any man

Bush uncultivated land outside the city limits

Squatter someone who claims land by right of occupation

Mate a partner in getting a living in the bush, especially on the

goldfields

Aboriginal borrowings

Billabong a water hole

Jarrah a Western Australian tree

Kangaroo well known marsupial species

Kookaburra the kingfisher-type species of bird with a characteristic laugh

like call

Budgerigar small brightly coloured bird

Modern period 1890 – present

1890-1914

shickered drunk

bludger a person who lives off others

bottle-oh a person who collects bottles from houses

(the modern meaning of this is now a a shop that sells

liquor)

World War I

Bonzer very good

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Cobber a friend or mate

Furphy a rumour, false report

The Depression

Sleep out an improvised place to sleep on a verandah

Battler a person who struggles to make ends meet

World War II

Troppo mentally disturbed

Galah fool

Butler remarks that the greatest external influence on AusE is AmE and

even the quintessentially Australian term ‘the bush’ was probably

borrowed from AmE during the early 19th century. American film and

television and more recently the internet have enabled American culture

and language to be transmitted and used in Australia at the same moment

that they are used in the US. However, Butler and Peters (2001) both

indicate that Australians are quite selective as to which aspects of AmE

they adopt. For example AmE words like beach volleyball, drive-by, and

caffe latte have been adopted into AusE, but not advanced television, or

attack-fax which for cultural/technical reasons are not relevant to

Australia (yet). There is some evidence that AmE colloquialisms are

beginning to displace some of the more traditional Australian

colloquialisms such as the following (Curtain, 2001, p.261):

AusE Expressions Definition

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Traditional This is a bonzer little joint excellent, attractive,

pleasing

He’s got Buckley’s chance

of getting it a very slim chance, no chance

He gave me an ear bashing all night an incessant and long talk

Come on, spill your guts reveal all you know, tell all

He was as happy as Larry extremely happy

Too right I did absolutely, certainly,(emphatic

agreement)

It was hard yakka difficult and/or tiring work

Modern AusE expressions Definition

(mainly AmE origin)

He went ballistic became very angry

That lecture was full on intense, without reserve

I’m out of here leaving immediately

I just want to go home and veg out relax, especially by watching

television

What a spunk! Very attractive person,

sexually attractive

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Jeez, you’re a couch potato! A dull or inactive person,

spends a lot of time

watching television

Curtain’s study showed that younger Australians and new immigrants to

the country are more familiar with the more modern mostly American

expressions than the older Australian expressions mentioned above.

Let’s now move on to look at distinctive features of Australian syntax.

Generally speaking there are relatively few differences in grammar

between AusE, BrE and AmE, although it could be noted that in formal

usage AusE tends towards BrE forms rather than AmE forms (Gramley

and Patzold, 2004). Newbrook (2001) reports that Trudgill and Hannah

(1994) note only two pages of grammatical differences between BrE and

AusE compared to 27 pages of differences between BrE and AmE.

In addition, any differences that do exist between AusE and BrE are

usually confined to particular situations and genres, and often coexist

with forms that are similar to BrE. For example, Australians use both

singular and plural verb forms with names of sports teams, while in

England only the plural verb form is used.

eg North Melbourne is playing well

or North Melbourne are playing well

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Both the above forms are acceptable in AusE, while only the second

example would be common in BrE (Newbrook 2001, p.115, 120).

According to Newbrook, in a survey of Australian newspaper reports, the

term Collingwood (the name of Melbourne cricket and Australian Rules

football teams) was used with singular verb concord 19 times and with

plural concord only three times.

The expression usedn’t to seems to be more common in AusE than didn’t

use(d) to which is used in other English speaking countries (Newbrook,

2001, p.116)

Eg She usedn’t to do it is preferable to

She didn’t use(d) to do it and to the more formal

She used not to do it

During the recent elections, a member of the Democrats party said to me

at a polling booth: The system usedn’t to be like that. It usedn’t. Hudson

(1993) suggests that Australians favour the expression Used she to do it?,

rather than Did she used to do it? (in Newbrook 20001, p. 117).

Gorlach (1991) remarks on the use of ‘she’ in AusE rather than ‘it’ in

certain expressions like she’ll be right, rather than it’ll be alright as in the

conversation:

A: D’ya think you’ll have enough fuel to get ome?

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B: Yeah, she’ll be right.

Gorlach (1991) also remarks on the AusE practice of ending sentences in

informal speech with ‘but’ eg I’ll finish her this arvo, but, and it is often

used together with though as in she’ll be right though, but. The

pragmatic meaning of but is not always clear, but in many contexts it

serves as an emphasis marker, and/or sometimes as a marker of humility

of the speaker.

Morphology

Another distinctive characteristic of AusE is the shortening of nouns like

names of professions, place names and other terms, in informal speech.

This practice serves various pragmatic functions depending on the

context. Hypocoristics (shortening of words) occur by using only a

section of the original word together with an ending, and/or using the

definite article ‘the’ before the shortened form. The most common

endings (at least for place names) are in descending order are /i/, /o/, /s/,

and /a/

Examples of Australian hypocoristics include:

Term Hypocoristic

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Professions:

journalist journo

musician muso

politician pollie

Place Names

Fremantle Freo

Brisbane Brissie

Alice Springs The Alice

Wollongong The Gong

Scarborough Scarbs

Bangkok Bangers

Other terms

Australian Aussie

barbecue the barbie

breakfast brekkie

afternoon arvo

documentary (film) doco

chock-full chockers

Barry Bazza

Sharon Shazza

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Hypocoristics are usually used to make the nouns easier and shorter to

say, with the emphasis on the first syllable, so generally nouns of one

syllable do not have a hypocoristic, (eg there is no hypocoristic for Perth

or nurse), although Simpson (2001) does mention Micka as a hypocoristic

for Mick. But there does not seem to be an explanation why only some

multi-syllable nouns have hypocoristics while others don’t. For example I

am not aware of common hypocoristics for lawyer, or labourer.

Hypocoristics are used in AusE and other speech styles, to signal

informal language and also, with place names, to indicate some

familiarity with the place. The following website has a useful data base

of Australian hypocoristics:

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/linguistics/research/hypocoristic/

The influence of Aboriginal languages and culture on AusE has already

been mentioned briefly above in the section on vocabulary. The process

of Aboriginal words and concepts entering the AusE lexicon began as

soon as English people had contact with Aboriginal people in 1768 and is

still taking place as Aboriginal affairs, culture and politics are reported in

the media. New AusE English words representing Aboriginal concepts,

politics and culture include the Dreamtime, country (1843) (in the sense

of a particular region of Australia belonging to a certain Aboriginal

group), sacred site (1933), land rights (1964), Mabo (1992), native title

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(1992), (secret) women’s/men’s business (1994), deadly (from AbE,

modern) . As mentioned earlier, many Aboriginal names are used in

AusE for different kinds of local flora and fauna and also for place names

eg in Western Australia: Nannup (tr: stopping place or place of parrots,

or meeting place by the water ), Manjimup (tr: ‘Manjin’ – a special edible

reed , ‘up’ - meeting place; or rushes near the waterhole), Yallingup (tr:

Place of Love) and in New South Wales: Wollongong (tr: the sound of

the sea, great feast of fish or hard water near ground), Wagga Wagga

(tr: crows or the place of many crows), Woy Woy (tr: much water, or big

lagoon). In recent times there has been a move to change some European

names of well known tourist sites in Australia to local Aboriginal names

eg Ayers Rock , named after the Premier of South Australia in 1873) is

now known as Uluru, and the Hammersley Range National Park in

Western Australia is now known as Karrijini National Park, although

sometimes the change in name has not been commonly used eg the Olgas,

a giant rock formation next to Uluru, named in 1872 after Queen Olga of

Wurttemberg, was renamed Kata Tjuta, but this name is not very well

known. There has also been a shift in the use of the term Aborigine,

since it implies that all Aborigines have a similar language and culture,

and it is an English term. Many indigenous people prefer to be known by

the word for person in their own local language. So indigenous people in

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the New South Wales area are known as Koori, in the Brisbane Area,

Murri and in the Perth area Nyoongah.

Finally in this lecture, I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the

development of Australian Aboriginal English (AbE), which has been

described by Malcolm (in Blair and Collins (eds), 2001) as ‘a range of

varieties of English spoken widely, and sometimes written, by Indigenous

Australians which have developed independently of AusE’ (p.201).

Some writers prefer to replace the term ‘Aboriginal’ with the word for the

specific indigenous people that are under consideration eg Koori English

or Nyoongah English, but for the purposes of this lecture, the term

Aboriginal English will be used, while recognising the limitations of this

generalised term.

Malcolm (2001) makes the point that AbE can be compared to the ‘new’

Englishes that developed in British colonies around the world where

indigenous languages came into contact with colonial English varieties,

and a pidgin, creole or new English developed as a result.

At the time of European settlement of Australia, it is estimated that there

were at least 300,000 Aboriginal people, comprising of roughly 500

relatively distinct dialect or language groups; each group numbering an

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average of 500-600 people. With relatively few speakers, the continued

survival of these languages and dialects was under threat from the large

numbers of speakers of another language (English) that had arrived in the

country.

The number of European settlers arriving in the First Fleet (1,300) almost

equalled the number of Eora people (1,500) living in the area of Port

Jackson (Sydney Harbour area) according to Horton (1994). And with

the continual arrival of new settlers, as well as the devastating effects of

new diseases introduced by the Europeans, the Aboriginal people soon

became a minority in their own land. By 1840, just over 50 years after

the arrival of the First Fleet, there were none of the 1500 Eora people left

in the Port Jackson area.

The arrival of large groups of Europeans led to the displacement of large

numbers of Aboriginal peoples from their traditional lands, which

effectively weakened their links to their home culture and language.

They then became forced to move between two cultures, their own, which

gave them respect and identity, and the European one which denied them

these. Of the 500 distinct dialects existing before European settlement,

(or 250 mutually unintelligible Aboriginal languages, according to Dixon,

1993), only 20 are spoken and learned by Aboriginal children today.

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AbE developed in this environment as a common language or lingua

franca between Aboriginal people across the country, each with their own

local languages and cultures.

Most scholars agree that AbE developed after the formation of pidgins

and creoles (see lecture 2) during the early years of colonisation. But this

process seems to have developed differently in different parts of the

country. For example AbE developed from a creole in some parts of the

country (eg in the Kimberley in northern Western Australia), and in

others, adult speakers of Aboriginal languages adapted English words and

expressions to produce a hybrid language without the prior formation of a

creole (eg in south west Western Australia).

Although various different pidgins and creoles developed across Australia

because of the different local Aboriginal languages, many scholars

maintain that as they developed, they emphasised their commonalities

and reduced their differences in a process known as koineisation resulting

in one common dialect AbE. Koineisation is the development of a

common lingua franca in a territory because of the mobility of the

population and the perception that they are one speech community. AbE

shows remarkable consistency in its features in spite of the very different

local Aboriginal languages across the country. As is the case with many

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speakers of African American Vernacular English mentioned in the last

lecture, speakers of AbE are often bidialectal and will use AbE or AusE

according to the context.

Characteristics of AbE, many of which are a result of transference from

Aboriginal languages, include the following (Malcolm, 2001; and

Harkins, 2000):

Phonology:

Simplification of consonant clusters

Consonant elision (missing consonants) eg I’s for I was; We ent for

We went

Grammar:

Reduced dependence on the copula (verb ‘to be’) (as in AAVE) eg

He good man.

Reduced dependence on the auxiliary to express verb tense and

aspect eg They gone home

Question forms rely on intonation rather than reversal of subject

verb eg They gone home?

The use of double subjects eg My mother, she came from down

there

Multiple negative marking eg they didn’ give us nothin

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Lexis:

Most of AbE vocabulary is English, but sometimes the meanings

may not be the same as in AusE. A powerful example of this is the word

‘sorry’ as in ‘Sorry Day’, the Aboriginal version of ‘Australia Day’ which

is a national holiday that celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet in

Australia. Sorry in AusE is an apology for something wrong that the

speaker has done to the listener. But in AbE it also has the meaning of

mourning, so Sorry Day has the meaning of a ‘day of mourning’ rather

than a day for apologising for past wrongs.

The pragmatics of AbE and Aboriginal speech in AusE are discussed in

detail in another unit ‘Talking Across Culture’, so here I’ll just mention

that the rules of when, how and who to talk to usually follow the practices

of Aboriginal languages rather than English, and that there are strong

taboos regarding these practices which vary from one Aboriginal group to

another.

AbE can be considered as both a variety of English (AusE) as well as an

Aboriginal language, and considering the very different histories and

associations of AbE and AusE, it is likely that they will continue to

develop in separate ways, and serve as strong markers of identity for two

very different groups of speakers in Australia.

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