English language is one of the most spoken and widespread languages in the world. It is hardly to find a country, where English language will not be known or spoken. The reason for such popularity is colonial character of former British Empire. Being one of the greatest states, it has conquered huge territories. Englishmen brought to new territories their culture, traditions and language. Australia was one of the colonies of Great Britain. That is why, nowadays the national language of Australia is English. Though, it is not quite classic variant of English. Due to peculiarities of the language of locals, it was changed.
Nowadays, it has its own unique prosody. One of the main differences of the Australian variant of English is its unique pronunciation. It has a lot of common traits with New Zealand English and other variants of English language, peculiar for Southern Hemisphere. Moreover, there are different variants of pronunciation and dialects within Australian English. They are called General, Cultivated and Broad Australian.
Each of them has its own variant of pronunciation of certain vowels. Broad variant stresses nasality, elision of syllables, while Cultivated tends to copy British variant of pronunciation of vowels, however, the majority of people in Australia speaks General variant of language, though it is not the same as British. The main differences are in the pronunciation of vowels. The front vowels in Australian English are all raised if to compare them with the same vowels in British English. Moreover, the diphthongs /ɪə/ and /e:/ are usually pronounced in Australian English with negligible offglide.
Additionally, there is one difference in the pronunciation of consonants. The main aspect of Australian English is, that there are no glottal stops which are peculiar for British English. There are also some more differences in the pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs in Australian English. However, it is possible to say that these differences are not so significant and it is still easy to understand all variants of English for people which have the knowledge of Standard English. There is a tendency to consider Australian English to be similar to some dialects of British, such as Cockney.
Having analyzed the main differences of Australian and British variants of English, it is possible to make some conclusions. There is no such a great difference in pronunciation and phonologies of the languages. The main peculiarities and laws, according to which these language function, remain the same.
There was even a tendency at the beginning and in the middle of the 20th century which main aim was to make these variants closer by copying variants of pronunciation of vowels. That is why, it should be said that it is important for a clinician to take into account peculiarities of the language which appeared due to this process as it introduced some new variants of pronunciation.