Regional lexicon

The examples of regional differences in Australian English most often given by non-linguists are lexical. One well-known instance is a kind of processed cooked meat in a tube, called German sausage up to 1914. With anti-German feeling due to World War I, all manufacturers around Australia changed the name: in Melbourne, to Stras(s)burg (usually shortened to Stras(s)), in Adelaide to Fritz, in Sydney to Devon, in Brisbane to Windsor, in Tasmania to Belgium and in Perth to Polony. Other examples abound, in names of plants and animals, childhood and school activities, household items, and so on. Some are more subtle: the Tasmanian predilection to specify types of potatoes (pinkeye, sebago and so on) while most other regions do so much less. For a very large number of further examples.

Indeed, one of the popular criticisms of the first edition of the otherwise excellent Macquarie Dictionary (Delbridge et al. 1981) is that it gives mainly or only the Sydney or New South Wales forms. Most of these gaps are lexical, but some, including words showing TRAP/PALM/FACE differences, are in regional pronunciation; note, for example, cicada – the first edition gives only the Sydney PALM alternative (1981: 346). Later editions have attempted to correct this bias; and the Federation edition (Delbridge et al. 2001: 353), which give both PALM and FACE for this word, but with the Sydney form first and without attempting to localize the alternatives. Other minor errors in this area include basic with TRAP cited as American; this is actually an older, especially Queensland alternative to the more usual FACE pronunciation, and is not American. Here we have another example of stereotyping: attributing sociolectally low-status things to American influence, a long-standing Australian tendency.