Australian and New Zealand impact on the English language

English is the most important language of the world today. Last century’s quantum leaps in
information technologies, like the Internet, enabled us for the first time in history to
communicate with people from all over the world. The world-wide transfer of information in
a global community requires a lingua franca, a language that is understood and can be used
by everybody. Artificial languages, like Esperanto, have not attracted many learners - a
language without a past can have no future.
Instead, English and its numberless variants seem to be able to solve communication
problems in the future. No other language is so widespread, so commonly understood around
the globe. Obviously, the outstanding position of the USA in the fields of politics, economics,
science, and - most important - popular culture like pop music and cinema has contributed to
this fact.
The British Empire has laid the fundament for this development by founding colonies all
over the world, exporting their language even to the opposite side of the globe - Australia and
New Zealand. Like everything else alive, languages in use are subject to change and
development, especially in colonies, as new words are needed for new discoveries and ideas,
or just to simplify communication with natives. Sometimes new ways of pronunciation come
into fashion and spread until everyone has adjusted to them. In the course of the centuries,
even completely new languages can come into existence this way.
In this paper I will examine linguistic particularities of Australian English (AusE) and New
Zealand English (NZE) to find out if they are languages of their own, creoles or just variants
of English. In order to make their development better understandable, I will combine
historical facts about colonists, natives and language developments with linguistic analyses of
today’s Australian and New Zealand English.