Lecture #14-15 English Language in Australia and New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand English

Australian English began diverging from British English shortly after the foundation of the Australian penal colony of New South Wales (NSW) in 1788. British convicts sent there, including Cockneys from London, came mostly from large English cities. They were joined by free settlers, military personnel and administrators, often with their families.

In 1827 Peter Cunningham, in his book Two Years in New South Wales, reported that native-born white Australians of the time - known as "currency lads and lasses - spoke with a distinctive accent and vocabulary, with a strong Cockney influence. The transportation of convicts to Australia ended in 1868, but immigration of free settlers from Britain, Ireland and elsewhere continued. The first of the Australian goldrushes, in the 1850s, began a much larger wave of immigration, which would significantly influence the language. During the 1850s, when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was under economic hardship, about two per cent of its population emigrated to the Colony of NSW and the Colony of Victoria.

Among the changes wrought by the gold rushes was "Americanisation” of the language - the introduction of words, spellings, terms, and usages from North American English. The words imported included some later considered to be typically Australian, such as dirt and digger. Bonza, which was once a common Australian slang word meaning “great”, “superb” or “beautiful”, is thought to have been a corruption of the An1erican mining term bonanza, which means a rich vein of gold or silver and is itself a loanword from Spanish. The influx of American military personnel in World War II brought further American influence; though

most words were short-lived; and only okay, you guys, and gee have persisted.

Since the 1950s American influence has mostly arrived via pop culture, the mass media - books, magazines, television programs, and computer software - and the world wide web. Some words, such as freeway and truck, have even naturalised so completely that few Australians recognise their origin.

British words predominate: as mobile or mobile phone. Some American and British English variants exist side-by-side, as TV and telly (an abbreviation of television). In many cases - telly versus TV and SMS versus text, freeway and motorway, for instance - regional, social and ethnic variation within Australia typically defines word usage. Australian English is most similar to New Zealand English, each having a shared history and geographical proximity. Both use the expression different to (also encountered in British English, but not American) as well as different from.

There is also some influence from Irish English, but perhaps not as much as might be expected given that many Australians are of Irish descent. Influences include the Irish word ‘Ta' for thank you and also the pronunciation of the name of the letter "H" as "haitch" /h eitf /, which can sometimes be heard amongst speakers of "Broad Australian English", rather than the unaspirated "aitch" / eitf / more common among English speakers worldwide.

Pronunciation is broadly similar to Australian English, with the largest difference being the flattened i of New Zealand English. Vocabulary and usage show the influence of contact with the Moori language and there are also clear Scottish influences, particularly in the southern regions of the South Island.

A distinct New Zealand variant of the English language has been in existence since at least 1912, when Frank Swinnerton described it as a "carefully modulated murmur," though it probably goes back further than that. From the beginning of British settlement on the islands, a new dialect began to form by adopting Moori words to describe the flora and fauna of New Zealand, for which English did not have any words of its own.

Where there is a distinct difference between British and US spelling (such as colour/color and travelled/traveled), the British spelling is universally used in New Zealand. Some Americanisms have begun to creep in through their exposure in mass media (for example, the use of "math" rather than "maths" as an abbreviation for mathematics), though these spellings are non-standard. The British name for the last letter of the alphabet, zed, is used in New Zealand. Many local everyday words have been borrowed from the Moori language, including words for local flora, fauna, and the natural environment. There are also a number of dialectical words and phrases used in New Zealand English. These are mostly informal terms most common in casual speech.

The first comprehensive dictionary dedicated to New Zealand English was probably the Heinemann New Zealand dictionary, published in 1979. Edited by Harry Orsman, it is a comprehensive 1,300-page book, with information relating to the usage and pronunciation of terms that were both widely accepted throughout the English­speaking world and those peculiar to New Zealand. It includes a one-page list of the approximate date of entry into common parlance of many terms found in New Zealand English but not elsewhere, such as "haka" (1827), "Boohai" (1920), and "bach" (1905).

In 1997, Oxford University Press produced the Dictionary of New Zealand English, which it claimed was based on over forty years of research. This research started with Orsman's 1951 thesis and continued with his editing this dictionary. To assist with and maintain this work, the New Zealand Dictionary Centre was founded in 1997. Since then it has published several more dictionaries of New Zealand English, culminating in the publication of The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary in 2004.

A more light-hearted look at English as spoken in New Zealand, A personal Kiwi-Yankee dictionary, was written by American-born University of Otago psychology lecturer Louis Leland in 1980. This slim but entertaining volume lists many of the potentially confusing and/or misleading terms for Americans visiting or migrating to New Zealand. A second edition was published during the 1990s.