SYNTAX (basta naka ___ kay I yaw

yaw ra)
Australian English
Gday Mate! Let’s chuck some prawns and snags on the Barbie. Wanna a VB
Tommo/scotto/Robbo/Micky/Gunny?
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(2nd slide)
 Particularly in focus here is the vernacular (non standard) varieties and features of AE.

Pronouns
 Colloquial Australian English has the plural second person pronoun forms that have
become ubiquitous/universal. I.e. Yous and You guys
 A striking feature is to attribute gender with animate and inanimate nouns.
I.e. She can refer to a car or boat. ‘er (her) can refer to a leg of lamb (chuck ‘er on the
barbie)
 The use of whom is almost non existent. Most tend to favour who.
 The use of “me” instead of “I” or “my”. ‘Me, Jim and Leah’ or ‘Jim, Leah and me’.
‘He was angry at me scoring a goal’ instead of ‘He was angry at my scoring a goal.’
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(3rd slide)
Nouns and noun Phrases
 A common feature is to use ‘old’ otherwise pronounced as ‘ol’. ie. I went down to the ol
river yesterday.

Verbs and Verb Phrases

 Frequent use of –ing as a progressive indicator of something. ‘I am enjoying my yoga
classes. Top stuff that!’
 The frequent deletion of have as “I’ve”. ‘I only been there a couple of times’
 The replacement of HAVE with OF after a modal verb. ‘I would of picked it up for you!’
 The replacement of SHALL with modal WILL in particular in a first person interrogative
‘Will I call a taxi?’ ‘Will I go get some milk?’
 Omission of auxiliary HAVE. ie. ‘I gotta go’ (I have to go), ‘I better get going’ (I have to
get going)
 Using WAS instead of WERE when referring to past tense sentences. ‘You was there!’,
‘Course they was’
 Increased use of GOTTEN in intransitive constructions. ‘She’s gotten really angry’, ‘He’s
gotten the beer and headin over to Thommos’
newmanenglishlang Follow. (2012, June 10). Australian English. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/newmanenglishlang/australian-english-13265579