Australian English phonology

Australian English (AuE) is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world. As with most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.

The Australian English vowels /ɪ/, /ɪə/, /e/, /eː/ and /ɜː/ are noticeably closer (pronounced with a higher tongue position) than their contemporary Received Pronunciation equivalents.

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.

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