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UnlikeCanada,Australia has no concentration of a Europeanlanguage other than English within its borders. There are still manyAboriginal languages, though they each are spoken by small numbers and their continued existence is threatened. More than 80 percent of the population is of Britishdescent, but significant growth in the numbers of immigrants, especially from Europe and the Pacific Rim countries, took place in the last quarter of the 20th century.

During colonial times the new settlers had to find names for fauna and flora (e.g.,banksia,iron bark,whee whee) different from anything previously known to them: trees that shed bark instead of leaves and cherries with external stones. The wordsbrush,bush,creek,paddock, andscrub acquired wider senses, whereas the termsbrook,dale,field,forest, andmeadow were seldom used. A creek leading out of a river and entering it again downstream was called ananastomizing branch (a term from anatomy), or ananabranch, whereas a creek coming to a dead end was called by its native name, abillabong. The giant kingfisher with itsraucous bray was long referred to as alaughing jackass, later as abushman’s clock, but now it is akookaburra. Cattle so intractable that only roping could control them were said to beropable, a term now used as a synonym for “angry” or “extremely annoyed.”

Adeadbeat was a penniless “sundowner” at the very end of his tether, and ano-hoper was an incompetent fellow, hopeless and helpless. Anoffsider (strictly, the offside driver of a bullock team) was any assistant or partner. Arouseabout was first an odd-job man on a sheep station and then any kind of handyman. He was, in fact, the “down-under” counterpart of thewharf laborer, orroustabout, on theMississippi River. Both words originated in Cornwall, and many other terms, now exclusively Australian, came ultimately from Britishdialects.Dinkum, for instance, meaning “true, authentic, genuine,” echoed thefair dinkum, orfair deal, of Lincolnshiredialect.Fossicking about for surface gold, and then rummaging about in general, perpetuated the termfossick (“to elicit information, ferret out the facts”) from the Cornish dialect of English. Tobarrack, or “jeer noisily,” recalled Irishbarrack (“to brag, boast”), whereasskerrick in the phrasenot a skerrick left was obviously identical with theskerrick meaning “small fragment, particle,” still heard in English dialects from Westmorland to Hampshire.

Some Australian English terms came fromAboriginal peoples andTorres Strait Islander peoples: the wordsboomerang,corroboree (warlike dance and then any large and noisy gathering),dingo (reddish brown canine),galah (cockatoo),gunyah (bush hut),kangaroo,karri (dark red eucalyptus tree),nonda (rosaceous treeyielding edible fruit),wallaby (small marsupial), andwallaroo (large rock kangaroo). Although there is remarkably little regional variation in pronunciation throughout the entire continent, there is significant social variation. The neutral vowel /ə/ (as thea insofa) is frequently used, as in LondonCockney:arches andarchers are both pronounced [a:t∫əz], and the pronunciations of the diphthongs inRPday andgo are more like (RP)die andnow.

AlthoughNew Zealand lies over 1,000 miles away, much of the English spoken there is similar to that of Australia. The blanket termAustral English is sometimes used to cover the language of the whole ofAustralasia, but this term is far from popular with New Zealanders because it makes no reference to New Zealand and gives all the prominence, so they feel, to Australia. Between North and South Islands there are observable differences. In particular,Māori, which remains a living language (related to Tahitian, Hawaiian, and the otherAustronesian [Malayo-Polynesian] languages), has a greater number of speakers and more influence inNorth Island.

South Asian English

In 1950India became a federal republic within theCommonwealth of Nations, andHindi was declared the first national language. English, it was stated, would “continue to be used for all official purposes until 1965.” In 1967, however, by the terms of the English LanguageAmendment Bill, English was proclaimed “analternative official or associate language with Hindi until such time as all non-Hindi states had agreed to its being dropped.” English is therefore acknowledged to be indispensable. It is the only practicable means of day-to-daycommunication between the central government atNew Delhi and states with non-Hindi speaking populations, especially with theDeccan, or “South,” where millions speakDravidian (non-Indo-European) languages—Telugu,Tamil,Kannada, andMalayalam. English is widely used in business, inhigher education, and in scientific research.

In 1956Pakistan became anautonomous republiccomprising two states, East and West.Bengali andUrdu were made the national languages of East and West Pakistan, respectively, but English was adopted as a third official language and functioned as the medium of interstate communication. (In 1971 East Pakistan broke away from its western partner and became the independent state ofBangladesh.) English is also widely used inSri Lanka andNepal.

African English

Africa is one of the world’s most multilingual areas, if people are measured against languages. Upon a large number ofIndigenous languages rests a slowly changing superstructure of world languages (Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese). The problems of language are everywhere linked with political, social, economic, and educational factors.

The Republic ofSouth Africa, the oldest British settlement in the continent, resembles Canada in having two recognized European languages within its borders: English andAfrikaans, or Cape Dutch. Both British and Dutch traders followed in the wake of 15th-century Portuguese explorers and have lived in widely varying war-and-peace relationships ever since. Although the Union of South Africa, comprisingCape Province,Transvaal,Natal, andOrange Free State, was for more than a half century (1910–61) a member of theBritish Empire andCommonwealth, its four prime ministers (Louis Botha,Jan Smuts,J.B.M. Hertzog, andDaniel F. Malan) were all Dutch. The Afrikaans language began to diverge seriously from European Dutch in the late 18th century and gradually came to be recognized as a separate language. Although the English spoken in South Africa differs in some respects from standard British English, its speakers do not regard the language as a separate one. They have naturally come to use many Afrikanerisms, such askloof,kopje,krans,veld, andvlei, to denote features of the landscape and employ African names to designate local animals, plants, and social and political concepts. South Africa’s 1996 constitution identified 11 official languages, English among them. The wordstrek andcommando,notorious in South African history, are among several that have entered world standard English.

Elsewhere in Africa, English helps to answer the needs of wider communication. It functions as an official language of administration in, and is an official language of, numerous countries, all of them multilingual.Liberia is among the African countries with the deepest historical ties to English—the population most associated with the country’s founding migrated from theUnited States during the 19th century—but English is just one of more than two dozen languages spoken there by multiple ethnic groups. English’s place within that linguisticdiversity is representative of English in Africa as a whole.