Where did Australian English come from?

Australia was an island which was discovered much later than the other parts of the world. There was no specific objective in discovering another land but it was discovered as a part of the European expedition. Initially, the Dutch sailors discovered Australia in the 16th Century. But Lieutenant James Cook of Britain officially discovered Australian Land and it’s East coast in 1770.

The British colonization of Australia started with a view to transport all convicts from Britain to this far off land. Britain was facing a crisis of over populated convicts after the de-colonization from the USA. Eventually, convicts started getting offloaded on the Australian land. The language they spoke was English. Later there were convicts who got settled in Australia and they raised families. And this is how they developed the English language.

However, the English is Australia differed somewhat from the British. The Convicts started settling with the free settlers in the UK after the official colonization of New South Wales in 1788. Nearly 25% of the convicts were Irish. The native born white Australian people spoke English with a Cockney influence. The Gold Rush in Australia which started in 1850 saw a major immigrant turnover in the Australian land from different parts of Europe and this again influenced the language. World War II saw a lot of American English influence on the Australian English. And the accent got mixed up with the British or Irish English.

The Australian English has three main variances namely Broad, general and cultivated.

Australian vocabulary is not much different from the American and British English but it does have some words which are considered to be uniquely Australian. “Outback” for example, means a remote far off land. “Dincum” means hard work.

So this a short tale about the origin of Australian English. Did you understand Mate?

Linus Orakles
http://www.authorclub.info/