Australian Aboriginal English

In Nyungar country in Perth, Western Australia, they include address terms and kinship, uninverted questions (That's your Auntie?

), the utterance tag unna, and Nyungar terms such as boya, boodjar, maya-maya, and moorditji, among other features.

It includes words from the Narungga, Ngarrindjeri, and West Coast languages, as well as local variations in pronunciation.

According to Uncle Lewis O'Brien, people from the Point Pearce mission on the Yorke Peninsula have a distinct way of pronouncing "r" in words such as "girl" and "bird", somewhat akin to the accent of the Cornish miners who worked in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[10] Aboriginal English varieties also occur in Indigenous-authored fictional broadcast media, including kinship words like cousin brother, brother boys, sister girl and daughter girl, and other frequent words such as blackfella(s) and mob.

[12] In Aboriginal English, particularly in northern Australia, the pronouns he and him may be used for females and inanimate objects in additional to the expected masculine case.

This is also shared in standard English with the masculine pronouns possessing a neuter case, uncommonly (often historically) referring to an unspecified sex (e.g. one must brush his teeth).

For example: [boːɹd] "board", [t̠ʃɜɹt̠ʃ] "church", [pɜɹθ] "Perth"; but [flæː] "flour", [dɒktə] "doctor".

Sutton speculates that this feature may derive from the fact that many of the first settlers in coastal South Australia – including Cornish tin-miners, Scottish missionaries, and American whalers – spoke rhotic varieties.

[14] Although Indigenous language and basilectal Aboriginal English vowel systems are small, there is a high degree of allophony.

[14] Acrolectal Aboriginal accents tend to have a smaller vowel space compared to Standard Australian English.

Many Aboriginal people refer to their house as their camp, particularly in Central Australia and the Top End of the Northern Territory.

[citation needed] "Cheeky" (or "tjiki") may be used to mean "sly, cunning, malicious, malevolent, spiteful, ill-disposed, ill-natured, mischievous, vicious, bad, wicked, [or] evil", so can be used to describe a person, dog, mosquito or snake, and "a cheeky bugger is a universal substitute for just about anything or anybody on earth".

[17] It can be used to denote a dangerous or aggressive animal or person, so for instance could be used describe a dog that is likely to bite or attack.

[18] The word "country" has special meaning for Aboriginal people; it has a "spiritual and philosophical dimension" by which they relate to a certain place.

[20][21] Deadly is used by many Aboriginal people to mean excellent, or very good, in the same way that "wicked", "sick" or "awesome" is by many young English speakers.

In Victorian era slang used by criminals, "gammon" was to swindle someone or cheat them,[23] used for example in the sense of creating a distraction while pickpocketing; or, more generally, nonsense, "humbug".

[24] Its origin has been variously thought to be related to leg of cured ham known as gammon or the game of backgammon.

[23][25] The word is used across Australian Aboriginal communities, with its meaning given variously as inauthentic, cheap or broken;[24] to be pretending or joking; or just pathetic[25] or lame.

[28] The name of the town of Coober Pedy is thought to derive from the Kokatha-Barngarla term kupa-piti (or guba-bidi), which translates to "whitefellas' hole".

[33] In Aboriginal English, the word is used as a verb (yarning), referring to a "conversational and storytelling style where Indigenous people share stories based on real experience and knowledge, from intimate family gatherings to formal public presentations".

[36] Yarning circles have been introduced in men's and women's prisons across New South Wales, starting with Broken Hill Correctional Centre, in a bid to connect Indigenous inmates with their culture, and reduce reoffending and the high rates of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

It and its counterpart "blackfella" headline "Blackfella/Whitefella", an Aboriginal country rock anthem about the need for racial harmony.