Australian English

English is the national language, but the Australian form is very distinctive. For example, Australian vowels are much flatter than most forms of English and our speech is quite nasal. It may take a while to train your ear to Australian English if you haven’t heard it before.

'Aussies' love to shorten words. After shortening it, we will often add an ‘i’ or an ‘o’ to it, because this makes it feel more informal (just like us!), and sometimes we add a ‘z’ in before that. Ironically, we also like to lengthen words of only one syllable (we like 2-syllable words). We do this with everything from people’s names to everyday words. For example, ‘afternoon’ becomes ‘arvo’ (s’arvo is short for ‘this afternoon’); ‘barbecue’ becomes ‘barbie’; ‘breakfast’ becomes ‘brekky’; but ‘Jack’ becomes ‘Jacko’ and ‘Terri’ becomes ‘Tezza’. Well, it makes sense to us!

Our colloquial language is also quite colourful. For example, the word ‘blue’ can have many meanings including the colour, someone who has red hair (often nicknamed ‘bluey’), a fight (to have a ‘blue’), a sad mood, or even a description of someone who is considered truly Australian (to be ‘true blue’). It might sound confusing, but it won’t take long to catch on. There are some resources available to discover more about the differences of Australian English in the English language requirements sections.