Australian English Phonology - Vowels

Vowels

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, which is unusual amongst the various dialects of English. As with General American and New Zealand English, the weak-vowel merger is nearly complete in Australian English: unstressed /ɪ/ (sometimes transcribed as /ɨ/) is merged with /ə/ (schwa) except before a following velar.

There are two families of phonemic transcriptions of Australian English: revised ones, which attempt to more accurately represent the phonetic sounds of Australian English; and the Mitchell-Delbridge system, which is minimally distinct from Jones’ original transcription of RP. This page uses a revised transcription based on Durie and Hajek (1994) and Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) but also shows the Mitchell-Delbridge equivalents as this system is commonly used for example in the Macquarie Dictionary and much literature, even recent.

Notes and examples

/ɪ/

for example kit, bid, hid. (M.-D. /ɪ/.) The target for this vowel tends to be tenser than in other varieties of English, and may sometimes sound like it has shifted to /i/ to non-English speakers. Thus, words like pin and kin may sound almost the same as peen and keen to non-English speakers. The final vowel in words like happy and city, which is typically /i/, is lengthened to an /iː/ sound, so that these words sound like happee and citee, respectively. Some of these aforementioned features are present in Chicano English.

/e/

for example dress, bed, head. (M.-D. /ɛ/.) For some Victorian speakers this phoneme has merged with /æ/ in pre-lateral environments, and thus the words celery and salary are pronounced alike (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003). See salary-celery merger.

/æ/

for example trap, lad, had. (M.-D. /æ/.)

/a/

for example strut, bud, hud. (M.-D. /ʌ/.)

/ɔ/

for example lot, cloth, body, hot. (M-D. /ɒ/.) This vowel is in the same position as the first part of the diphthong (gold, hold, pole, etc.), though remains distinct from before l in words such as "poll" (dehorned cattle) and so on.

/ʊ/

for example foot, hood. (M.-D. /ʊ/.)

/ə/

for example about, winter. (M.-D. /ə/.) As in most varieties of English, this phoneme is used only in unstressed syllables.

/iː/

for example fleece, bead, heat. (M.-D. /i/.) Includes an onset to the high front vowel, except before laterals (Palethorpe & Cox, 2003). /iː/ may be : for some speakers.

/ɪə/

for example near, beard, hear. (M.-D. /ɪə/.) This sound is traditionally transcribed with a diphthongal glyph; however, it is usually pronounced as a diphthong (or disyllabically) only in open syllables; in closed syllables, it is distinguished from /ɪ/ primarily by length (Cox, 2006; Durie & Hajek, 1994). It is primarily distinguished from /iː/ by the significant onset in the latter.

/eː/

for example square, bared, haired. (M.-D. /ɛə/.)

/æː/

for example bad, tan. (M.-D. /æ/.) This sound is traditionally transcribed and analysed the same as the short /æ/, but minimal pairs exist in at least some Australians’ speech (Blake, 1985; Durie & Hajek, 1994). It is found in the adjectives bad, mad, glad and sad, before the /ɡ/ sound (for example, hag, rag, bag) and also in content words before /m/ and /n/ in the same syllable (for example, ham, tan, plant). In some speakers, especially those with the Broad accent, /æː/ and /æ/ will be shifted toward . 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. So for several speakers, the /æː/ vowel in words like "jam", "man", "dam" and "hand" will be shifted towards .

/æɪ/

for example face, bait, hade. (M.-D. /eɪ/.) Includes a significantly lower first element than in many other dialects of English.

/æɔ/

for example mouth, bowed, how’d. (M.-D. /aʊ/.) The first element may be raised in broad accents. For many speakers, the vowel in words like "town" and "now" is .

/aː/

for example bath, palm, start, bard, hard. (M.-D. /a/.).

/əʉ/

for example goat, bode, hoed. (M.-D. /oʊ/.) The onset factually begins somewhere between /ə/ and /a/ . There is significant allophonic variation in this vowel, particularly a backed one before /l/.

/ɑe/, /ɑi/

for example price, bite, hide. (M.-D. /aɪ/.) The first element may be raised and rounded in broad accents. The vowel in "high" may be for those with the Broad accent, so "buy" might sound like "boy" in the foreign ear. This is a direct influence from the Cockney accent. This feature is also present in the New York accent.

/oɪ/

for example choice, boy. (M-D. /ɔɪ/.)

/oː/

for example thought, north, sure, board, hoard, poor. (M.-D. /ɔ/.) Many cases of RP /ʊə/ correspond to this phoneme in Australian English, but unlike in some British accents there is no general merger between /oː/ and /ʊə/.

/ʉː/

for example goose, boo, who’d. (M.-D. /u/.) In some parts of Australia, a fully backed allophone, transcribed is common before /l/ (Durie & Hajek, 1994). 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 (Cox & Palethorpe, 2003). Many cases of RP /ʊə/ correspond to the sequence /ʉː.ə/ in Australian English.

/ɜː/

for example nurse, bird, heard. (M.-D. /ɜ/.) This sound is pronounced at least as high as /eː/, and is often pronounced rounded (Cox, 2006; Durie & Hajek, 1994). This glyph is used — rather than /ɘː/ or /ɵː/ — as most revisions of the phonemic orthography for Australian English predate the 1996 modifications to the International Phonetic Alphabet. At the time, was suitable for any mid-central vowel, rounded or unrounded.

/ʊə/

for example tour. (M.-D. /ʊə/). A rare, almost extinct phoneme. Most speakers consistently use /ʉː.ə/ or /ʉː/ (before /r/) instead.