Phonetic Differences Between British and Australian English

PHONETIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND
AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
M.I. Prytulchyk, M.V. Melyanets, 3rd course

Scientific supervisor – M.V. Tatarevich
Polessky State University
The development of Australian English has a relatively short history spanning

just over two centuries.
With the appearance of English in Australia, the identical language was used
in England, but over time it separated and gained its territorial dialect. It existed
only in oral speech. However, the original English was still used in written form.
Subsequently the language of the divided collective began to be used in the field of
written-literary language and had its own literary norm, their social and territorial
varieties, their vernacular and slang. Nowadays it is Australian English.
According to the history the Australian variant has its origin from the English
of the lower stratum of society from the XVIII century and from the specific
characteristics of the language of sailors and soldiers, and the closest to the South-
West dialect of British English with a large admixture of Irish. The languages of
the Australian aborigines influenced names of animals, plants and place names. All
this led to the fact that English of modern Australia differs from the English of
Great Britain.
Let us consider the phonetic features of Australian.
The main observations concerning the origins of Australian pronunciation,
were made by Australian linguists Mitchell and Delbridge, which has done
significant research in the field of Australian pronunciation. They postulate the
following: 1) Australian English in origin is the so-called "urban" because the first
settlers were mostly from the cities; 2) it is primarily the language of the working
class, the language of the majority of uneducated and poor people; 3) Australian
English includes language features of many parts of England, Scotland, Wales and
Ireland.
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that all these forms of language were
brought into Australia, and Australian variant is a generalization of all language
peculiarities of transported dialects.
When the researchers compare Australian and British English they note that
the largest differences occur in the speech of everyday communication and in the
phonetic system and vocabulary of the two varieties of English.
In Australian English today we can distinguish three spelling variations:
General, Cultivated and Broad. These spelling variations haven’t particular
geographical localization, they haven’t clearly defined cultural constraints between
segments of the population. These variations in pronunciation can be observed
within the same city or even the same family. The most typical variation for
Australia is General, more than half of the population, including members of
Parliament, teachers of schools and other educational institutions speak this
variation. Many researchers believe that at least 30% of native speakers can use
and change the type of pronunciation depending on the situation of
communication.
Despite the differences that exist between the three variations of Australian
pronunciation, they form a single system that is different from English
pronunciation. Broad has the largest number of differences, Cultivated is the
closest to it. Based on this, some researchers put forward the hypothesis that the
primary form of Australian pronunciation is colloquial form that is the result of
mergers and the evolution of parlance, dialects and jargons spoken by the first
settlers in Australia. Broad and especially Cultivated arose as more "prestigious"
forms by smoothing out the features of the vernacular. [1, p. 72]
Australian English intonation is also characterized by less sharp increases and
falls of tone within the utterance. So the tone of the British version seems to be
more lively and emotional, comparing with the smoother and monotonic
Australian even in the statements of the same type. In addition to differences in
pronunciation of sounds, Australians prone to reductions and omissions of sounds.
Sometimes it can lead to mistakes in understanding the meaning of the statements.
Differences in pronunciation can be illustrated by the following examples:
Australian British
"egg nishner" "air conditioner"
"G'dye, myte" "Good day, mate"
"Wyne chevva cold share." "Why don't you have a cold shower."
There are differences of intonation in certain types of questions, in some

traditional formulas, but these phenomena began studied seriously recently.
Researchers see the result of the influence of Australian English intonation in
standard phrases like “Good-bye now. Is that so?” and similar phrases, intonational
contour of which coincides with Australian English.
There are differences in the placement of accents in the sentence, too.
Australians avoid large number of unstressed syllables between two percussive
sounds. The secondary stress appears or unstressed word in RP (Received
Pronunciation) becomes stressed in the GAus (Great Australian). As a result, the
number of stressed syllables in the sentence in GAus typically greater than in RP.
[2, p. 48]
All peculiar features of Australian English is most consistently manifested in
the form of colloquial pronunciation, combined with numerous cuts. For example,
suppose dialogue. [3]
Australian British Russian

— Knife a samich? — Can I have a — Можно мне сэндвич?
sandwich?
— I’ll gechawun inn a — I’ll get you one in a — Один момент.
sec. sec.
— Emma chisit? — How much is it? — Сколько это стоит?
— Attlebee aitninee. — That’ll be eight — С Вас 8.90.
ninety.
We can say that this dialogue reveals the essence of the Australian accent.
English language proficiency at a level that gives school and university not always
allows us to understand people and to communicate with them freely in Australia.
This is evidenced by our research, during which we played out the dialogue in
front of friends which study English. According to the results it was found that
phrases that were spoken with an Australian accent, were partly not understandable
to the listeners.
After some investigation and by studying the peculiarities of the Australian
language, it became clear that in the presence of certain distinctive features,
languages, though largely similar, but studying General English at school and
University will not allow you to communicate with Australians and understand
them better.
References
1. Орлов Г.А. Современный английский язык в Австралии. Москва,
Высшая школа, 1999.
2. Жлуктенко Ю. А. Варианты полинациональных литературных языков.
Киев, Наукова думка, 1981.
3. Свободная общедоступная мультиязычная универсальная интернет-
энциклопедия – Википедия [Электронный ресурс]/Режим доступа:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki.

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PHONETIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRITISH AND

M.I. Prytulchyk, M.V. Melyanets, 3rd course

The development of Australian English has a relatively short history spanning

There are differences of intonation in certain types of questions, in some

Australian British Russian

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