Australian Aboriginal English
| Australian Aboriginal English | |
|---|---|
|
English
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog |
abor1240 (code abandoned, but bibliography retained)
|
| AIATSIS | P4* |
Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) refers to a dialect of Australian English used by a large section of the Indigenous Australian population. It is made up of a number of varieties which developed differently in different parts of Australia. These varieties are generally said to fit along a continuum ranging from light forms, close to Standard Australian English, to heavy forms, closer to Kriol. There are generally distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use. AAE is not to be confused with Kriol, which is a separate language from English spoken by over 30,001 people in Australia. Speakers have been noted to tend to change between different forms of AAE depending on who they are speaking to, e.g. striving to speak more like Australian English when speaking to a non-Indigenous English speaking person.
Several features of AAE are shared with creole languages spoken in nearby countries, such as Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, Pijin in the Solomon Islands, and Bislama in Vanuatu.
AAE terms, or derivative terms, are sometimes used by the broader Australian community. Australian Aboriginal English is spoken amongst Indigenous people generally but is especially evident in what are called 'discrete communities' i.e. ex-government or mission reserves such as the DOGIT communities in Queensland. Because most Indigenous Australians live in urban and rural areas with strong social interaction across assumed rural and urban and remote divides, many so-called 'urban' people also use Aboriginal English.
Aboriginal English does not make use of auxiliary verbs, such as to be and to have, or copulas to link things together. For example, Aboriginal English equivalent of "We are working" would be "We workin'". Linguists do not regard this as "just dropping words out", but as a fundamental change to the way in which English is constructed.
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