In 1768, the Royal Society sent an expedition to the southern seas under the King's auspices to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, putting the enterprising Captain Cook in charge of the mission. During that trip, the English discovered new Zealand, then, heading west, they touched the coast of Australia.
A new continent was discovered, and another Union Jack left there. A vast territory could not be discovered at a better time, when the English jails were so overcrowed as to make them next to impossible to run. Australia would help the British ease the pressure while ensuring the colonisation of this brand new world.
The use of Australia as penal colony was specially important to the English since detainees could no longer be 'transported' to the United States after they had achieved independence (1783). The first wave of immigrants dates from 1788 to about the first half of the century: these colonists were former detainees from the bigger English cities, and Australia was originally intended to releave excessive overcrowding in the mother country while ridding the country of some 'unwanted' persons.
Under this plan, thousands of inmates were trasported to Australia. A good deal of them belonged to the ‘Old Bailey’ (London's Prison). These people had been raised in London's East End where Cockney was widely spoken. In his Two Years in New South Wales (1827), Peter Cunningham reported that although he could hear a distinct accent by that date, there were still strong Cockney traits in it.
Aussie English was born in Down Under. The fate of these convicts is in many ways reflected in the story of Moll Flanders, who has her sentence commuted to "trasportation" to America. Here she is sentenced to hard labor for a landowner until she ‘pays off’ her ‘debt’ to the state and eventually starts off her own life.
A second wave of immigration was the result of the Gold Rush (1848) which for the first time brought to Australia many people whose native language was not English. However, the Crown would not stop sending its detainees until the late 60s. One century later, the presence of U.S. troops stationed during WW2 and later in the 50s left its own marks, too.
American television further extended the influence of American English in more recent times. Since the first penal colonies, however, Aboriginal culture and the extraordinary biodiversity of Australasia contributed a number of new words for rock formations, animals and plants never seen before. Here are species that bear no relationship to any other found in the rest of the world. There is no equivalent for a platypus, a dingo or a kangaroo elsewhere in the world.
- Main Australian Accents
Three are the main accents in Down Under: Broad, General, and Cultivated.
Broad exhibits strong traits of the old Cockney, and is spoken in the outback while General is more or less the kind of more neutral Australian English spoken by mainstream society, with slighter Cockney and U.S. traits, though many educated Australians also master U.S. English pretty well.
"Cultivated Australian" is spoken by about 10% of the population, but is usually avoided in favor of General Australian because it is felt pompous and academic, nearer to polished UK. English. Because of their ‘low’ origins, most of the first settlers spoke Cockney, and that influenced the language, though not to the degree we are used to hearing from Australian characters in movies who play on a stereopyped form of Broad.
- U.K. and American influence
The influence of RP is still remarkable, and there is a strong tendency is to conform to British spelling. However, American influence is evident and may produce variants many people don't bother to use. Curiously, though, there is evidence that the natives themselves tended to excise the "u" of -our words so that the -or spelling might not be related to American influence.
- Australian Vocabulary
Australian English has perhaps some of the funniest and unique words in the English language alongside a unique sense of humor: a barbie is a barbecue, a footpath is a sidewalk, Oz is a shortened form for Australia, much as as Aussie stands for Australian, as in ‘Aussie slang’ or the ‘Aussies’, the Australians. The tendency to make diminutives without changing the meaning of the original word is uniquely Australian, too. The slang from Downunder is one of a kind: ‘sick’ is 'good', 'well', while ‘to shout’ is to offer a round of drinks, ‘squiz’ is to have a look, and when you don't remember a name for something you might just say “what's the ‘thingo’”, ‘this is ... the thingamajic’ or “that ‘whatsit’”. Australian slang sounds like jibberish for non-Aussies though familiar they be with U.S. And British English. Its departure from mainstream English is further reiforced by that unique sense of humor that is pecular to these lands.
Some examples (left, U.K. English, right, Australian slang):
beer / amber liquid
child / ankle biter
heavy smoker/ashtray
brushing flies away /Australian salute
diarrhoea/Bali belly
no longer useful/cactus
money/cracker
apple-polisher/crawler
fight/ ding-dong
well/dinky di
An idiot/drongo
clear one's throat and spit/hoick
A can of beer/ice-cold
Don't include me/include me out
Home brew/jungle juice
A New Zealander/Kiwi
A surfer with bleached hair/lemonhead
A seducing woman/mantrap
bad/off
A policeman's truncheon/pacifier
Prolonged petting/pash-on
Drunk/plastered
English citizen/pommy bastard
Undies/Reginalds
flat broke/stone motherless
intoxicated/tanked up
toiled/throne
wimp/turkey
attractive girl/two-wheeler
undies/duds
cheap red wine/vino
foil one's hopes /white ant
you (two or more)/youse
dead asleep after much drinking/zonk