Irish Influence on Australian English

Abstract

Abstract Throughout the nineteenth century, people of Irish origin (including those born in Australia to Irish parents) were the second largest ethnic group in the Australian population, after those of English origin. This suggests that Irish people should have made a substantial contribution to Australian English, but the themes of this chapter will be that the contribution was rather small and very difficult to establish with any certainty. Research to date has uncovered surprisingly few lexical and grammatical items that can definitely be traced to the influence of Irish English; phonology remains an area in which Irish English may have had more of an impact on the emergence of Australian English, but the Irish contribution here has yet to be properly assessed. Here, we draw on a variety of different sources, including early linguistic commentary, to better understand the Irish impact on the formation of Australian English.