Australian English & New Zealand English
The English language arrived in Australia in 1788 when it was used as a penal colony in the first half of the 19th century. At the time, the English-speaking people in Australia were therefore largely men and mostly working class people. Immigrants came largely from the UK and Ireland.
One important language change in the southern hemisphere was the ‘Cockney Diphthong Shift’ (Cockney is the traditional working class dialect of London).
“Cockney Diphthong Shift” in the Southern Hemisphere:
Traditionally, Australian English has been divided into three sociolects: Broad, General, and Cultivated.
A general rule is: the further away from the Received Pronunciation realisation, the broader the speaker or utterance is. Broad AusE is usually associated with male working class speakers, however, the three sociolects are continuums in terms of the phonetic realisations as well as the socioeconomic properties of speakers.
Example: the <face> vowel:
[ei] = ‘cultivated’ Australian
[ɛi] = ‘general’ Australian
[ai] = ‘broad’ Australian
“Short front vowel shift”:
The short front vowels are those that are used in <kit>, <dress>, and <trap>. In AusE, these are frequently raised and fronted.
Regional variation in Australia:
In comparison to the UK and even the US, regional variation is quite limited in Australia.
Although Australians frequently state that people talk differently in different places in Australia, this is likely an epiphenomenon emerging from different socioeconomic contingencies in different regions.
However, some degree of ‘true’ regional variation has been observed (e.g. the broad ‘a’ in ‘dance’ is more common in Perth and Adelaide than in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane).
New Zealand became a European settlement in 3 waves.
The first wave came through the privately run ‘New Zealand Company’, the second wave came because of the Otago Gold Rush in 1861, and the third wave came because of planned immigration from the 1870s onward.
Early immigrants were mainly from the UK, but also from Australia, the US, and other parts of Europe. In comparison to Australia, there were fewer Irish immigrants and more Scottish immigrants.
New Zealand English is in general quite similar to Australian English (e.g. the diphthong shift).
“Short front vowel shift” (NZE Version):
The major difference between the two varieties is the pronunciation of the <kit> vowel. Also, the <dress> and <trap> vowels are raised even further than AusE.
RP = /I/ -> AusE = /i/ -> NZE = /ɨ/ or /ə/
RP = /ɛ/ -> AusE = /e/ -> NZE = /I/
RP = /æ/ -> AusE = /ɛ/ -> NZE = /ɛ/
Regional variation in NZE:
Regional variation in New Zealand is even less prominent than in Australia. However, there is one notable exception: the vestigial rhoticity in Southland.
