The dialect evidence

A.G. Mitchell takes the view that in the creation of both Broad Australian and General Australian a process of levelling of dialects took place, and the major dialects were those of south-east England. But why is it that in the lexicon of Australian English there seem to be words from a vast range of dialects? And why is it that the most significant dialect borrowings do not occur in the early years of settlement? This paper takes words of dialect origin and examines them by topic, region of origin and period of adoption into Australian use. The findings suggest that there is some correlation between the patterns of migration from particular dialect areas and the appearance in Australian English of words from those dialect areas, but that overall the pattern of lexical borrowings from dialects is indeed contrary to the pronunciation evidence.