File:Australia_2021_English_language_spoken_at_home.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Australian English
Sign in to saveAlso known as en-AU, en_AU, AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, Strine, enau
set of varieties of the English language native to Australia
Key facts
- Native to
- Australia
- Native speakers
- 18.5 million in Australia (2021) , 5 million L2 speakers of English in Australia (approx. 2021)
- Language family
- Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English Australian English
- Early forms
- Old English Middle English Early Modern English Modern English late 18th century British English 19th century British English
- Writing system
- Latin (English alphabet), Unified English Braille
- Iso 639 3
- –
- Glottolog
- aust1314
- Ietf
- en-AU
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
Show 6 more facts
- native label
- Australian English
- indigenous to
- Australia
- dialect of
- English language
- Wikimedia language code
- en-au
- topic's main category
- Category:Australian English
- Commons category
- English language in Australia
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The percentage of people who speak only the English language at home, 2021 Australian English ( locally /əˈstɹæɪljən ˈɪŋɡləʃ/; AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and de facto national language. While Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the de facto national language since the onset of British settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians in 2021. It is also the main language used in compulsory education, as well as federal, state and territorial legislatures and courts.
Australian English began to diverge from British and Hiberno-English after the First Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales in 1788. Australian English arose from a dialectal melting pot created by the intermingling of early settlers who were from a variety of dialectal regions of Great Britain and Ireland, though its most significant influences were the dialects of Southern England. By the 1820s, the native-born colonists' speech was recognisably distinct from speakers in Britain and Ireland.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Australian English” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.