Article about Australien English by Lenii

English is a very interesting language. There are many varieties of English: American, British and Australien English. The difference of the three kinds is the pronunciation or also the spelling. The last few weeks I searched a lot of information about Australia espacially about the special English there.

The Australien English is like the British English a non rhotic language. This means that even there is an “r” in the spelling of a word, it is not always pronounced. For example neighbour, water or hour. While in American English you mostly say the “r”, so it is rhotic.

The hypocoristics of Australien English is quite a simple word formation process. In some of this forms the Australians take away the final syllable of a word and add a suffix as another ending, for instance for journalist they say journo. But sometimes they add the suffix at the complete word like gifty which means actually gift.

The Australien English did not borrow many words from the Aborigines who are the native people of Australia. Only for names of places like Ulladulla and Wagga Wagga or also for animals they have just lived in Australia, for example the kangaroos, they use aboriginal words.

In addition there are also idiomatic expressions in Australien English. A example is the expression “Good on ya!” that means “Good job”. Also “brekky” is another word for “breakfast”.

First I thought the Australien English is the same English we learn at school, but now I can summarize that there are some differences where you have to pay attention to. I like this English because of the hypocoristics which sound almost always cute.