Australian English phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

• 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 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 . 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 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. The longer vowel is found in the adjectives bad, mad, glad and sad, before the sound and also in content words before and in the same syllable. 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. 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 and the lowering of is not categorical, this sound is considered to belong to the phoneme. The word-initial schwa is typically mid :. In the word-internal position, 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 except before a following velar. New Zealand English takes it a step further and merges all instances of with, 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 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

• The vowel of has an onset, except before laterals. The onset is often lowered to, so that beat is for some speakers.
• As in American English and modern RP, the final vowel in words like happy and city is pronounced as, not as .
• 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 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 . 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 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

• The first column, HCE, is the vowels first outlined in Harrington, Cox and Evans and fully presented in.
• The symbol can be easy to misinterpret. It represents different vowels: the vowel in the HCE system, but the vowel in the Mitchell-Delbridge system.
• 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 is 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.

• 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 the following vowel, the -ful pronunciation is the historical one.

• Intervocalic undergo voicing and flapping to the alveolar tap after the stressed syllable and before unstressed vowels and syllabic or, as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel. For those speakers where also undergoes the change, there will be homophony, for example, metal and medal or petal and pedal will sound the same. In formal speech is retained. in the cluster can elide. As a result, in quick speech, words like winner and winter can become homophonous. This is a quality that Australian English shares with New Zealand and North American English.

• Some speakers use a glottal stop as an allophone of in final position, for example trait, habit; or in medial position, such as a followed by a syllabic is often realized as a glottal stop, for example button or fatten. Alveolar pronunciations nevertheless predominate.

• The alveolar lateral approximant is velarised in pre-pausal and preconsonantal positions and often also in morpheme-final positions before a vowel. There have been some suggestions that onset is also velarised, although that needs to be further researched. Some speakers vocalise preconsonantal, syllable-final and syllabic instances of to a close back vowel similar to, so that milk can be pronounced and noodle. This is more common in South Australia than elsewhere.

• Standard Australian English usually coalesces and into and respectively. Because of this palatalisation, dune is pronounced as, exactly like June, and the first syllable of Tuesday is pronounced like choose. That said, there is stylistic and social variation in this feature. and in the clusters and are similarly affricated.
• Word initial and have merged with and respectively. Other cases of and are often pronounced respectively and, as in assume and resume .
• Similarly, has merged with word initially. Remaining cases of are often pronounced simply as in colloquial speech.
• and other common sequences of consonant plus, are retained.
• For some speakers, may be uttered instead of /s/ before the stressed /tj/ sound in words like student, his'tory, eschew, street and Aus'tralia – As a result, in quick speech, eschew will sound like esh-chew. According to author Wayne P. Lawrence, "this phonemic change seems to be neither dialectal nor regional", as it can also be found among some American, Canadian, British and New Zealand English speakers as well.

Other features

• Between voiced sounds, the glottal fricative may be realised as voiced, so that e.g. behind may be pronounced as either or.
• The sequence is realised as a voiceless palatal fricative, so that e.g. huge is pronounced.
• The word foyer is usually pronounced, as in NZ and American English, rather than as in British English.
• The word data is commonly pronounced, with being the second most common, and being very rare.
• The trans- prefix is pronounced with, even in South Australia, where the trap–bath split is significantly more advanced than in other states.
• Some dialects of Australian English feature a fricated in certain contexts, such as in words like beautiful and great.
• In English, upward inflexion typically signals a question. Some Australian English speakers commonly use a form of upward inflexion in their speech that is not associated with asking questions. Some speakers use upward inflexion as a way of including their conversational partner in the dialogue. This is also common in Californian English.

Relationship to other varieties

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