Australian English (AuE) accents are the non-rhotic pronunciations of English used by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, Australian English is a relatively regionally homogeneous variety of the English language. Australian English is notable for vowel length contrasts which are absent from some other English dialects.
Vowels + Australian English vowels Front Central Back Close Mid Open () Diphthongs The vowels of Australian English can be divided according to length. The long vowels, which include monophthongs and diphthongs, mostly correspond to the tense vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation (RP) as well as its centring diphthongs. The short vowels, consisting only of monophthongs, correspond to the RP lax vowels. There exist pairs of long and short vowels with overlapping vowel quality giving Australian English phonemic length distinction.
There are two families of phonemic transcriptions of Australian English: revised ones that attempt to more accurately represent the phonetic sounds of Australian English and the Mitchell-Delbridge system, which is minimally distinct from Jones' original transcription for RP. This page uses a revised transcription system from Harrington, Cox, and Fletcher (HCE), but at times it additionally provides the Mitchell-Delbridge equivalents as the latter system is commonly used for example in the Macquarie Dictionary and much of the literature.
Monophthongs
The Australian English vowels in , in and in are noticeably closer (pronounced with a higher tongue position) than their Standard Southern British equivalents. However, a recent short-front-vowel chain shift has resulted in younger generations having lower positions than this for these three vowels. The target for is closer to cardinal than in other dialects. The phrase fish and chips as pronounced by an Australian () can sound a lot like feesh and cheeps to speakers of New Zealand English and other English dialects around the world. Similarly, words such as bit and sit may sound to others like beat and seat, respectively. The sound in is usually pronounced as a diphthong (or disyllabically , like ) only in open syllables. In closed syllables, it is distinguished from primarily by length and from by the significant onset in the latter. tends to be higher than the corresponding vowel in General American or RP. The typical realization is close-mid , although for some speakers it may be even closer (according to John Wells, this pronunciation can occur only in Broad varieties). A recent change is the lowering of to the region. For some Victorian speakers, has merged with the of in pre-lateral environments, and thus the words celery and salary are homophonous as . See salary-celery merger. As with New Zealand English, the / vowel in words like park , calm and farm is central (in the past even front ) in terms of tongue position and non-rhotic. This vowel is only distinguished from the vowel by length, thus: park versus puck . The sound is traditionally transcribed and analysed the same as the short in , but minimal pairs exist in at least some Australians' speech.Blake, B. J. (1985), "'Short a' in Melbourne English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 15: 6–20Durie, M.; Hajek, J (1994), "A revised standard phonemic orthography for Australian English vowels", Australian Journal of Linguistics 14: 93–107 The longer vowel is found in the adjectives bad, mad, glad and sad, before the sound (for example, hag, rag, bag) and also in content words before and in the same syllable (for example, ham, tan, plant). In South Australia, plant is usually pronounced with the vowel sound , as in rather and father. In some speakers, especially those with the broad accent, and will be shifted toward and , respectively. There is /æ/ tensing before a nasal consonant. The nasal sounds create changes in preceding vowels because air can flow into the nose during the vowel. Nasal consonants can also affect the articulation of a vowel. Thus, for many speakers, the vowel in words like jam, man, dam and hand is shifted towards . This is also present in General American and Cockney English. Length has become the main difference between words like 'ban' and 'Ben', with 'ban' pronounced and 'Ben' pronounced . is pronounced as open front by many younger speakers. The phoneme of may be pronounced at least as high as , and has a lowered F3 that might indicate that it is rounded .Cox, Felicity (2006), "The acoustic characteristics of /hVd/ vowels in the speech of some Australian teenagers", Australian Journal of Linguistics 26: 147–179 The glyph is used — rather than or — as most revisions of the phonemic orthography for Australian English predate the 1993 modifications to the International Phonetic Alphabet. At the time, was suitable for any mid central vowel, rounded or unrounded. The schwa is a highly variable sound. For this reason, it is not shown on the vowel charts to the right. The word-final schwa in comma and letter is often lowered to so that it strongly resembles the vowel : . As the latter is a checked vowel (meaning that it cannot occur in a final stressed position) and the lowering of is not categorical (meaning that those words can be also pronounced and , whereas strut is never pronounced ), this sound is considered to belong to the phoneme. The word-initial schwa (as in enduring ) is typically mid : . In the word-internal position (as in bottom ), is raised to : , as in American English roses . Thus, the difference between the of paddock and the of panic lies in the backness of the vowels, rather than their height: . In the rest of the article, those allophones of are all transcribed with the broad symbol : etc. is also broadly transcribed with : , which does not capture its closeness. As with General American, the weak vowel merger is nearly complete in Australian English: unstressed is merged with (schwa) except before a following velar. New Zealand English takes it a step further and merges all instances of with (even in stressed syllables), which is why the New Zealand pronunciation of the dish name fish and chips as sounds like 'fush and chups' to Australians. In Australian English, is restricted to unstressed syllables, as in most dialects. The trap-bath split is a regional variable in Australia, with phonemic incidence of the vowel being more widespread (appearing in a larger number of words) in South Australia than elsewhere in the country. This is due to the fact that that state was settled later than the rest of Australia, when the lengthened pronunciation was already a feature of London speech. Research done by shows that the word graph is pronounced with the vowel () by 86% speakers from Adelaide, whereas 100% speakers from Hobart use the vowel in this word: . There are words in which the vowel is much less common; for instance, Crystal reports that both the word grasp and the verb to contrast are most commonly pronounced with the vowel: , . This also affects the pronunciation of some placenames; Castlemaine is locally , but speakers from outside of Victoria often pronounce that name by analogy to the noun castle in their local accent.
Diphthongs
+ Variation in Australian closing diphthongs Phoneme Lexical set Phonetic realization Cultivated General Broad The vowel of has an onset , except before laterals. The onset is often lowered to , so that beat is for some speakers. As in General American and Standard Southern British, the final vowel in words like happy and city is pronounced as (happee, citee), not as (happy-tensing). In some parts of Australia, a fully backed allophone of in , transcribed , is common before . As a result, the pairs full/fool and pull/pool differ phonetically only in vowel length for those speakers. The usual allophone is further forward in New South Wales than Victoria. It is moving further forwards, however, in both regions at a similar rate. The second elements of and ( and ) on the one hand and () on the other are somewhat different. The first two approach the vowel , whereas the ending point of is more similar to the vowel . John Wells writes this phoneme , with the same ending point as and (which he writes with and ). However, the second element of is not nearly as different from that of the other fronting-closing diphthongs as the ending point of is from that of , which is the reason why it could be transcribed narrowly as . The first element of may be raised and rounded in broad accents. The first element of is significantly lower than in many other dialects of English. There is significant allophonic variation in the of , including a backed allophone before a word-final or preconsonantal . The first part of this allophone is in the same position as , but differs from it in that it possesses an additional closing glide, which also makes it longer than . is shifted to among some speakers. This realisation has its roots in South Australia but is becoming more common among younger speakers across the country. The phoneme of is rare and almost extinct. Most speakers consistently use or (before ) instead. Many cases of RP are pronounced instead with the phoneme in Australian English. "pour" and "poor", "more" and "moor" and "shore" and "sure" are homophones, but "tore" and "tour" remain distinct.
Examples of vowels HCE Example words Mitchell-Delbridge OED strut, bud, hud; cup bath, palm, start, bard, hard; father price, bite, hide trap, lad, had bad, tan face, bait, hade mouth, bowed, howd dress, bed, head square, bared, haired nurse, bird, heard about, winter; alpha goat, bode, hoed kit, bid, hid near, beard, hear; here fleece, bead, heat happy thought, north, sure, board, hoard, poor; hawk, force choice, boy; voice lot, cloth, body, hot goose, boo, whod foot, hood The first column, HCE, is the vowels first outlined in Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) and fully presented in . (It differs somewhat from the ad hoc Wiktionary transcription.) The symbol can be easy to misinterpret. It represents different vowels: the vowel in the HCE system (transcribed in the Mitchell-Delbridge system), but the vowel in the Mitchell-Delbridge system (transcribed in HCE). The fourth column is the Oxford English Dictionary transcription, provided for comparison, taken from the OED website. In a few instances the OED example word differs from the others given in this table; these are appended at the end of the second column following a semicolon.
Consonants Australian English consonants are similar to those of other non-rhotic varieties of English. A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below.
+ Australian English consonant phonemes Labial Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive Affricate Fricative Approximant
Non-rhoticity Australian English is mostly non-rhotic; in other words, the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. So the words butter , here and park will not contain the sound.
Linking and intrusive The sound can occur when a word that has a final in the spelling comes before another word that starts with a vowel. For example, in car alarm the sound can occur in car because here it comes before another word beginning with a vowel. The words far, far more and farm do not contain an but far out will contain the linking sound because the next word starts with a vowel sound. An intrusive may be inserted before a vowel in words that do not have in the spelling. For example, drawing will sound like draw-ring, saw it will sound like sore it, the tuner is and the tuna is will both be . This occurs between , and and the following vowel regardless of the historical presence or absence of . Between , and (and whenever it stems from the earlier ) and the following vowel, the -ful pronunciation is the historical one.
Flapping