Origins
The earliest form of Australian English was first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the colony of New South Wales. This very first generation of children created a new dialect that was to become the language of the nation. The Australian-born children in the new colony were exposed to a wide range of different dialects from all over Britain and Ireland, in particular from Ireland and South East England.
The native-born children of the colony created the new dialect from factors present in the speech they heard around them, and provided an avenue for the expression of peer solidarity. Even when new settlers arrived, this new dialect was strong enough to deflect the influence of other patterns of speech.
A large part of the convict body were the Irish, 25% of the total convict population. Many of these were arrested in Ireland, and some in Great Britain. It is possible that the majority of Irish convicts either did not speak English, or spoke English "indifferently". There were other significant populations of convicts from non-English speaking areas of Britain, such as the Scottish Highlands and Wales.
Records from the early 19th century survive to this day describing the distinct dialect that had surfaced in the colonies since first settlement in 1788, with Peter Miller Cunningham's 1827 book Two Years in New South Wales, describing the distinctive accent and vocabulary of the native born colonists, different from that of their parents and with a strong London influence. Anthony Burgess writes that "Australian English may be thought of as a kind of fossilised Cockney of the Dickensian era."
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