Confused Canadian Investigates AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH

when you think of australia you might think of kangaroos koalas or premium australian beer like foster's lager sorry aussies but another thing you might think of is the distinct australian way or ways of speaking english the story of australian english begins with the arrival of european settlers in australia in 1788. convicts from britain and ireland were exiled to new south wales which was founded as an overseas penal colony they weren't all ruthless criminals mind you many of them were only guilty of theft and some of them were children over 160 000 convicts were sent there over the next 80 years mainly working-class people from the major cities of england as well as scotland wales and ireland there were also many free settlers who joined them the significance of this is that people speaking different english dialects from all over britain and ireland were essentially thrown together in the same place where they had to learn to understand one another remember back then there was no radio or television to familiarize people with different accents in order to understand each other well they had to learn to speak in a way that was less regional this resulted in dialect leveling dialectal variations were removed from their speech you could say that the core of australian english is a compromise between the various regional dialects of britain and ireland and since then australian english has developed its own features words and expressions it has also been influenced by additional waves of immigration since the days of the penal colony ended there are basically three varieties of australian english broad general and cultivated australian english they essentially form an accent continuum with the speaker's accent depending mostly on whether they grew up in a rural area or an urban area their socioeconomic background and perhaps the kind of subculture they identify with broad australian english has the features that people outside of australia tend to associate with australian english you know when they think of steve irwin the crocodile hunter or maybe paul hogan and crocodile dundee and just a word of warning australians never say this throw another shrimp on the barbie unless they're taking the piss out of you taking the piss is an expression used in britain and australia that means to make fun of someone or mess with them it's not used in north american english i'm canadian and i sometimes use it but that's because i've picked it up from some aussie friends of mine here are a few examples of broad australian english that you'll probably only hear in rural areas or maybe amongst older people or amongst um is it politically correct to say awkers and bogans yeah does that mean no no yeah women are sometimes referred to as sheilas somehow that one particular name sheila came to represent women in general for example if i say hey man where's liam in theory i might get this reply now he's over there having a chat with some sheila struth she's a bit of a looker struth is used as an interjection to show surprise it actually originated in the uk and is a contraction of god's truth but now it's used much more in australia it's truth well at least in broad australian english a similar word is karaki this is also used as an interjection to show surprise but again this is limited to broad australian english unless someone's taken the piss taking the piss cultivated australian english is spoken by less than 10 percent of aussies non-aussies might mistake it for british received pronunciation it has many fewer obviously australian features general australian english is spoken by the majority of aussies and is somewhere between the two these different varieties of australian english are not regional for the most part it's hard to tell the difference between people from brisbane melbourne sydney and other cities based on their accents some people also argue that there's a fourth accent the accent of the outer suburbs of major cities which developed among communities that have immigrated to australia since the second world war this kind of accent is often perceived as an immigrant accent though it's spoken among the children and grandchildren of immigrants and crosses ethnic boundaries in those neighborhoods most of the examples after this point in the video will be more or less general australian english spelling australian english normally follows british spelling conventions rather than american that means in words like organize and authorize the isc spelling is normally preferred to the iz-e spelling words like color and flavor are spelled with our rather than or words like center and liter are spelled with re rather than er and so on the reason why american english uses different spellings from british english is because of noah webster whose dictionary published in 1828 chose certain variant spellings to be the american ones in order to make american english distinct this was specific to the u.s so it didn't affect australia pronunciation australian accents are arless accents or non-rhotic accents meaning that the r sound is not pronounced at the end of a syllable or word unless there's a word beginning with a vowel after it this is the same as in most accents of england for example k compare that to my rhodic canadian accent care okay i don't care i don't care different accents of english are mainly distinguished by differences in vowels and that's the case with australian english for instance aussie english basically has two a sounds some words are pronounced with a in both australian and north american english for example cat cat nap nap but other words that i would pronounce with an a sound are often pronounced differently with a long ah in australian english for example bath bath laugh laugh this is because of a split that occurred in the early modern english vowel ah in southern england the sound began to change to a long ah sound as in father before certain cells this is referred to as broad a this change made its way to australia but the vowel became a central vowel rather than a back vowel ah rather than the british word boss this distinction is not used across the board in australian english though it has the most influence in south australia the most noticeable feature of australian english pronunciation is probably its diphthongs an australian greeting i'm sure you've heard is g'day or g'day mate it's really only aussies who use this as a greeting but if i tried to say it it would sound like good day mate listen to the difference in the diphthongs the vowel sounds good day mate right the word day is not to be confused with the word die die the equivalent of american and british i is i for example price price hide hide there's also a different australian pronunciation of the diff long that i would pronounce as ow australians say something like hell downtown downtown there's also a diphthong that i pronounce as oi australians say something more like oi boy the aussie sound is less open another is the diphthong o as in boat australians say there are some characteristic features of intonation in australian english one such feature is called high rising terminal this means that australians often say clauses within a statement with intonation that rises at the end like a yes or no question in north american or british english in the following example you can hear it at the end of the first clause uh met robbo down the park then we met up with a couple of mates and played a bit of footy this kind of intonation is standard in australia these days you might hear it sometimes in north america and the uk as well though a lot of people find it annoying you might hear it referred to as uptalk vocabulary while the vast vast majority of australian english vocabulary is the same as in other varieties it does have its own word preferences as well as words and expressions that are uniquely aussie the most famous aussie phrase just might be get i might as we heard before just like in the uk aussies often refer to friends as mates as in the uk the word mate is used in contexts where north americans would say friend or maybe man when addressing someone casually but unlike in the uk in australia mate is not limited to casual situations or to your peers you can use it with older people or people with a higher rank or position than you this reflects the overwhelmingly casual nature of aussies and the way they communicate to inquire about someone's well-being you might hear them ask there you go as a north american this sounds strange to my years we ask how's it going rather than how are you going similarly when you apologize an aussie might say you're right rather than that's all right which is what i would say the first time i heard this i was confused like why are you telling me i'm all right another expression that's likely to confuse us north americans is she'll be right mate who's she referring to well no one it's referring to the situation i would say it'll be all right or it'll be fine when aussies want to get someone's attention you might hear them say i would say hey instead well you might hey man fair income or just dinkum this expression means genuine honest or true it can also be used as a question fair income for real and it can be used as an adjective to describe someone he's a fading aussie this is like saying he's a true aussie i've come across a couple of possible etymologies of this expression one of them states that it comes from a dialectal word of england dinkum meaning hard work another etymology states that it comes from cantonese which was spoken by prospectors in the early gold mines dingum meaning real gold though i tend to think the first etymology is the correct one remember that sentence from a moment ago he's a fading aussie well we could expand that a little he's a fair income true blue aussie mate i might say he's a real genuine aussie true blue this phrase is kind of like fair dinkum meaning true as in genuine but also has the meaning of loyal and all the people with that positive personality trait i say good on you good on you is what aussies say when they want to show they're impressed or they respect something good you've done i would probably say nice work or good job from what i understand good anya comes from hiberno english that is irish english note that good anya can be used both sincerely and sarcastically for example let's say i'm bragging about how much of a pimp i am and how i scored last night yeah right i might good on ya when you say thanks and aussie might reply with no worries which is like saying no problem or don't worry about it no worries can also be used in response to an apology no worries is a way of life in australia and something of a national motto aussies tend to be light-hearted and not take things too seriously but if you're one of those people who tends to complain or sulk or if you're easily offended you might be called a suk or as an adjective aussies love to use diminutive words special forms of words that show endearment this is usually done through shortening a word and adding a special suffix to it afternoon becomes this afternoon becomes this arbo or server barbecue becomes bobby mosquito becomes muzzy football becomes footy cigarette becomes siggy sandwich becomes sanger postman becomes posty garbage man becomes gaba christmas becomes chrissy chocolate biscuit chocky bicky surface station becomes servo and that's for a service station meaning a gas station or petrol station mcdonald's becomes maccas and this is ubiquitous throughout australia isolation becomes oh so as in quarantine due to 19. how'd you go during iso there were also some words in aussie english that originate in aboriginal languages of australia one example you might hear in particular in broad australian english is which means hard work yaka is a word from the yagara language which used to be spoken in the brisbane region this word made its way into australian english through the english-based pidgin language that was originally used between european settlers and aboriginals that pigeon later developed into australian creole which is still spoken by around 20 000 people today in the northern territory there are some other well-known nouns that represent specific things in the australian environment like dingo or boomerang which come from the extinct darug language which used to be spoken in the sydney area australian english is largely the same as other varieties of english but with their own accents vocabulary and attitude that reflect the laid-back nature of aussies endearing and friendly are two words that come to mind when i think of aussies and their way of speaking english oh one final feature of australian english that we can get into is their extremely liberal use of the word though youtube might ban me if i talk about that so maybe i should just move on to the question of the day for speakers of aussie english i'm sure there are heaps of aussie words and expressions that i didn't have time to mention in the video so what other ones would you like to add write them in the comments down below and this is the part of the video when i say thanks to my patreon patrons especially my top tier patrons whose names appear on the screen becoming a member on patreon gives you various benefits like early releases ad free and promotion free videos and access to a patrons only online community check out patreon.com langfocus for more information and to everyone thank you for watching and have a good one [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Langfocus

Views: 558,407

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, linguist, linguistics

Id: 0-r8QnePI34

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/charmingpea]

Fairly accurate and reasonable coverage for mine.

[u/RabbitLogic]

He forgot Eshay Australian English.