New migrants learning English as their second language are picking up Aussie slang and using words such as ‘esky’, ‘thong’, ‘doona’ and ‘nappy’ at the same rate as Australian-born people, according to new research.

A team led by Australian National University researcher Dr Ksenia Gnevsheva have been looking at how people acquire the vocabulary of a second English dialect as a reflection of how well they are settling in and becoming part of Australian society.

“The way people adopt local words and phrases after arriving in Australia is reflective of their engagement with the Australian culture,” said Dr Gnevsheva, of the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics.

“It was interesting to see how readily non-English speakers do this and the social forces that drive the process,” she said.

“Despite a perception that immigrants are resistant to assimilation, what our research found is people who speak a foreign language are actually more likely to adopt the Australian lexicon, more readily than native English speakers who come here and at the same rate as the Aussies who live here. That is quite extraordinary,” Dr Gnevsheva said.

The study tested four groups of people living in Australia: native Russian speakers; whose first working exposure to the English language was in Australia, American migrants who experienced Australian English as their second English dialect, native Russian speakers who had lived in America before coming to Australia and native Australian speakers.

The groups were shown pictures of 50 items that have distinctly Australian or American names such as jam (jelly), esky (cooler), lolly (candy), lift (elevator), rockmelon (cantaloupe), tomato sauce (ketchup), torch (flashlight) and queue (line) and were asked what they called these things.

“The results were surprising in that the local Australians used 80 per cent of the Australian words and 20 per cent of the American words, the same results as Russians speaking English as their second language,” Dr Gnevsheva said.

“The American group only adopted 20 per cent of Australian words and the Russian speakers who had lived in the US first kept half of the American words they’d learnt and adopted 50 per cent of the words in the local Australian dialect.”

Dr Gnevsheva said some of the social forces that affect second dialect acquisition are personal and mostly bound up in identity.

“We found people who already speak English can be reluctant to “give up” their native words in favour of the Australian version,” she said.

“Many of the Americans in the study said they knew Australian words like ‘nappy’ but just couldn’t bring themselves to use them because they felt like a “traitor” to their country and culture if they did.

“This also shows us just how strongly a person considers language a part of their identity and how big an ask it is if we demand they give up their native tongue.

“Whereas, the Russians who’d learnt a bit of UK English at school were far less wedded to the words they’d learnt from a book and were ready to drop them in favour of the Australian version,” she said.

“They found on arrival here what they’d learnt didn’t chime with real life situations or communications in the country they’d chosen to move to,” Dr Gnevsheva said.

Laurie Nowell

AMES Australia Senior Journalist