Significant features of New Zealand and Australian English – consonants

Stops

Widely used by Australians and New Zealanders is a flap or tap [R] variant of /t/ in intervocalic final positions (as in get it and sort of ) and medial positions (as in better and beauty). This variant also occurs commonly preceding syllabic laterals and nasals (as in bottle and button). There is also a glottalized version of /t/ that can be heard more usually in medial contexts (such as cutlass) and in end positions (such as shut), less so intervocalically (as in get out).

These varieties share with many other English dialects the feature of palatalization of /t, d, s, z/ preceding the GOOSE vowel [u]. There is, however, considerable variation between the pronunciations with yod and with palatals, as in tune [tjun] versus [tʃun]. The palatalized variants are more likely to occur when the syllable is unstressed (as in fortune and educate).

A pronunciation of /t/ that has come to be associated with AusE is affrication. It is most obvious in prepausal positions and has been linked particularly to middle class and female speech. Both AusE and NZE are also showing evidence of a complex assimilation taking place in the consonant clusters /tr/ and /str/ – the affricated realizations [tʃɹ] and [ʃtɹ] are becoming increasingly frequent in these varieties. The word tree, for example, is pronounced as [tʃɹi]. In younger speakers there are also signs of this affricated pronunciation extending to the /stj/ cluster of words such as student.

In Aboriginal English the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops is not strongly maintained. The preference is for voiceless stops, especially in word-fi nal position. The alveolar stop /t/ is often rhotacized between vowels, as in shut up [ʃΛɾΛp]. Maori English shows evidence of a loss of aspiration on voiceless stops.