Australian English by Veronica

When you want to go to Australia, you have to be careful with the language, because they speak a different English called “ Australian English.“

There are a lot of differences between Australian,British and American English which I’m going to tell you in the following.

Australian English is a non-rhotic language. This means that even though there is an “r“ in the spelling of a word, it is not always pronounced. Sometimes the “r“ is omitted after a vowel.

Another specific pronunciation in Australian is the t-flap.

The t-flap is an intervocdic between vowels, /t/ is usually pronounced /r/ in Australian English. AuSSIE pronunciation is a mix of American English ( t-flapping ) and British English (non-rhotic).

Australians often use shortended forms. They take the first part of a word and finish it off with -ie or –o. For example Aussie which stands for Australian or brekkie which stands for breakfast.

If you go to Australia and make some friends, they maybe give you a Nickname. Nicknames are typical in Australia. They are shortenings of first names surnames to end in -ie, -o or -y.

For example they call you Johny instead of John.

The last thing about Australians is that they like to invent new words by shorting existing words and invent new ones like chook which means chicken .

Some important differences between American, Australian and British English are that in American English they pronounce the  “r“ .

In England, they pruduce a so called “glottal stop“ in their throat instead /a/ /t/. And at last in Australian English the t-flap as I explained before.

These were the main features between AmE, BE and AuSSIE, but mainly about AuSSIE. I hope I helped you and that you learned something new.

I personally think that AuSSIE ist he hardest English to learn, because there are so many differences from the English we learn in school and also you have to pay attention to many things.( t-flap, inventing new words…)