17 Facts About Australian English

1.

Australian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia.

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2.

Australian English began to diverge from British and Irish English after the First Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales in 1788.

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3.

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.

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4.

Australian English is relatively consistent across the continent, although it encompasses numerous regional and sociocultural varieties.

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5.

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.

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6.

The dialects of Australian English spoken in the various states and territories of Australia differ slightly in vocabulary and phonology.

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7.

General Australian accent serves as the standard variety of English across the country.

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8.

General Australian English is the dominant variety across the continent, and is particularly so in urban areas.

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9.

The increasing dominance of General Australian English reflects its prominence on radio and television since the latter half of the 20th century.

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10.

Academics have noted the emergence of numerous ethnocultural dialects of Australian English that are spoken by people from some minority non-English speaking backgrounds.

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11.

Australian English has many words and idioms which are unique to the dialect and have been written on extensively.

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12.

Internationally well-known examples of Australian English terminology include outback, meaning a remote, sparsely populated area, the bush, meaning either a native forest or a country area in general, and g'day, a greeting.

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13.

Australian English makes no distinction between gammon and hamGit: A foolish person.

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14.

Grammatical differences between varieties of Australian English are minor relative to differences in phonology and vocabulary and do not generally affect intelligibility.

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15.

Australian English spelling is significantly closer to British than American spelling, as it did not adopt the systematic reforms promulgated in Noah Webster's 1828 Dictionary.

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16.

The Concise Oxford Australian English Dictionary has been attributed with re-establishing the dominance of the British spellings in the 1920s and 1930s.

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17.

Prominent general style guides for Australian English include the Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage, the Australian Government Style Manual, the Australian Handbook for Writers and Editors and the Complete Guide to English Usage for Australian Students.

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