Varieties of /u/ and /oʊ/

Another particularly obvious and consistent regional difference, this one even noted by Mitchell and Delbridge (1965: 84), is the front-of-central rounded onset of the GOAT vowel, with a parallel in the GOOSE vowel, in Adelaide and elsewhere in South Australia. As they say, this is especially noticeable in the speech of higher socioeconomic status females, but is also used by males and lower-status females there. Again, some nonlinguists are aware of this feature. These realizations contrast greatly with the “cultivated” high sociolectal forms elsewhere which are much further back, though still not as far back as in many other varieties of English, and also with the “broad” forms elsewhere, which show some centralization and more diphthongization but much less rounding and fronting.

There is a particularly stark contrast in Adelaide between the realizations of GOOSE and GOAT words before a lateral as opposed to elsewhere. In most regional varieties, similar vowel qualities occur for these vowels with or without a following lateral: vowels between back and central, with more or less rounding and diphthongisation according to sociolectal form and region. But in South Australia the vowels of words such as school and goal are fully back, and so differ very markedly from the central-to-front vowels of Adelaide words such as coo or go, and from the more or less central vowels heard elsewhere in Australia.

A difference first noted in Oasa (1979, cited in Bradley 1980) is that the trajectory offglide in the GOOSE vowel differs somewhat between regions of Australia. It starts well front of central and remains there in South Australia (other than before a lateral), starts slightly back of central and moves slightly further back in Victoria, and starts further back from central and moves slightly further front in Sydney and much further front in Brisbane. There is also a tendency to palatalise the consonant preceding GOOSE + lateral, as in cool, school or pool; this is both youthspeak for cool, and a Queensland tendency. This is also the second-most-frequently cited regional stereotype: nearly eight per cent of our regional sample cited differences in school or pool, correctly attributing a palatalized form to Queensland. Surprisingly, this is more salient than the more extreme differences involving a postvocalic lateral.