The Development of Australian

English
• About 300 years ago in
England, many young men
(and also some women)
moved to London from the
rural area to look for a
better life; some came
from as far as Scotland
and Ireland
• Social conditions were not so good, and
some of these as well as London people
ended up being arrested for “petty”
crimes
• There were not enough prisons for all
those who were arrested
• Some were kept on boats that were too
old to go to sea
• Somebody had the idea to send them far
away—to Australia, which the Europeans
had recently discovered
• Most were “transported” for 7 years,
after which they got their “ticket of leave”
• Some went back to England, others
stayed as free settlers
• Most of the prisoners were of the lower
class, Cockney speakers mixed with some
other regional accents, including Scottish
and Irish English
• There were also other classes of speakers,
such as army officers to supervise the
prisons, other professions; these may
have had upper class accents
• Australian English is the
result of a mixture of all
these factors and probably
more
• Includes the specialized
vocabulary of plants,
animals, geographical
features of the area, other
words
Australian English
• [e] sound as in Austra [əɪ] lia
• Other vowels
• Non-rhotic (post-vocalic [r]
not pronounced
• Rising intonation
• Vocabulary
 New Zealand English
• To the outsider, NZ English has much in
common with Australian
• It is a bit more conservative than
Australian, not quite as extreme
• Some say the conservatism has its bases
in the fact that the settlers came of their
own free will and had no bias against RP
(as prisoners might have)
• NZ also has been influenced somewhat by
American English and also the local
Maori language
• It has some specific vocabulary not
shared with Australian