The arrival of English in Australia coincides with the start of British colonization in 1788, Australia being used solely as a penal colony for many years. The vast majority of Australia's English-speaking population were convicts up until around 1840. Most convicts came from London, the English Midlands and Ireland, and Australian English has many similarities with these varieties, pronunciation being particularly close to Cockney.

Pronunciation

Australian English is often known as 'Strine' (from Australian), a which embodies a couple of the main differences in Australian pronunciation and vocabulary: truncation and the change in the 'ei' diphthong:

• the RP 'ei' diphthong of "pay" is pronounced 'ai' as in "pie", the same as in Cockney;
• the RP 'ai' sound also shifts to 'oi', again as in Cockney, so "buy" sounds more like "boy";
• Australian, like standard British English, is non-rhotic, so the 'r' in "park" is silent;
• the RP long 'aah' of a word such as "park" or "hard" becomes more of an 'aa' or even an 'a'; at times, therefore "hard" can sound fairly like "had";
• many words that in RP normally have the 'ah' vowel sound, in Australia are pronounced with 'a' as in northern British English, eg. "plant", "dance", "castle";
• final schwa sounds are often more open, hence "never" becomes 'nevah'.

Distinctive Australian vocabulary derives from three main sources: Aboriginal terms (especially for the typical animals and wildlife of the country), English terms which are now forgotten in Britain and elsewhere (often regional or dialect terms), and truncated words with an added vowel ending (eg. 'tinnie' - a can/tin of beer, a 'sickie' - a day off sick, or a 'smoko' - a [smoking] break). See the lists below.

Despite its size, there is very little regional variation within Australia. There are, however, stronger and weaker accents; the weaker ones tend to be fairly close to R.P.

New Zealand English has been so heavily influenced by Australian English that only Australasians can tell themselves apart on pronunciation alone, though rarely do New Zealand speakers have a very strong accent. More specifically:

• New Zealanders would never use the 'a' vowel sound instead of 'ah', as in "dance";
• indeed the 'ah' sound as in "hat" often becomes very closed, almost approaching an 'eh';
• occasionally New Zealanders lengthen a single syllable word to two syllables (perhaps an influence from the large number of settlers from Scotland), hence 'thrown', 'grown' and 'yes' sound more like 'throw-en', grow-en' and 'ye-es';

Alongside some Australian borrowings, the main distinctive feature of New Zealand vocabulary is the group of loanwords from Maori, particularly for flora and fauna.