Introducing Australia

Perth, founded in 1829 by Captain James Stirling, was incorporated in 1856. After the discovery of gold in southwestern Western Australia in the early 1890s the city developed rapidly. Near midnight on Feb. 20, 1962, US astronaut John Glenn, orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 150 mi. (241 km.) in his Mercury spacecraft "Friendship 7", reported that he could see a glowing Perth below. The residents of Perth had turned on every light in the city as a greeting to the astronaut. Since then Perth has often been referred to as the "City of Light".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.2 The language

Nearly three quarters of Australians live in metropolitan cities and coastal areas. The beach is an integral part of the Australian identity.

English is the national language. Australian English has a unique accent and a small number of unique terms, some of which have found their way into other dialects of the English-speaking world. It has less internal dialectal variation than either British or American English. Grammar and spelling are largely based on those of British English. According to the 2006 census, English is the only language spoken in the home for close to 79% of the population. The next most common languages spoken at home are Italian (1.6%), Greek (1.3%) and Cantonese (1.2%). A considerable proportion of first- and second-generation migrants are bilingual. Between 200 and 300 Indigenous Australian languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact, of which only about 70 have survived. Many of these are exclusively spoken by older people; only 18 Indigenous languages are still spoken by all age groups. At the time of the 2006 Census, 52,000 Indigenous Australians, representing 12% of the Indigenous population, reported that they spoke an Indigenous language at home.Australia has a sign language known as Auslan, which is the main language of about 5,500 deaf people.

Spoken Australian English is thought to be highly colloquial, possibly more so than other spoken variants. Whether this idea is true or not, a substantial number of publications aimed at giving an overview of Australian English have been published. [3]

Many books about Australian lore have been published, beginning with Karl Lentzner’s Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages in 1892. The first dictionary of based on historical principles that covered Australian English was E. E. Morris’s Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898). [7]

After a long period of uninterest and/or antipathy, the first synchronic dictionaries of Australian English began to appear. In 1976, the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary was published, the first dictionary edited and published in Australia. In 1981, the more comprehensive Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English was published, after 10 years of research and planning. Updated editions have been published since and the Macquarie Dictionary is widely regarded as authoritative. Oxford University Press also publishes a range of dictionaries of Australian English, including the Oxford Dictionary of Australian English. [2]

Various publishers have also produced “phrase books" to assist visitors. These books reflect a highly exaggerated and often outdated style of Australian colloquialisms and they should partially be regarded as amusements rather than accurate usage guides.[14]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

Australia was discovered by Captain Cook in 1770. It was then first used as a colony for convicts.

The Commonwealth of Australia is a Federal state within the Commonwealth. Its territories are the continent of Australia, the island of Tasmania and a number of smaller islands. It has an area of about eight million square kilometers.

The continent of Australia is mostly a great plain with mountains in the east and south-east.

Australia has several different climatic regions, from warm to subtropical and tropical.

There are five big cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane. Australia is rich in minerals. Most of the factories are concentrated in or around the big cities. Agriculture is the main occupation in Australia. This country is famous for its sheep.

Today there are about fifteen million people in Australia; most of them are of British origin.

The Commonwealth of Australia is a self-governing federal state and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth of Australia consists of six states and two territories. Australia has a Parliament of the Commonwealth AT Canberra. The Federal Parliament consists of the senate and the House of Representatives.

There are many wild animals in Australia. Some of them, such as the kangaroo, the dingo, or mild dog, and the koala, are, not found in any other country of the world.

Australia is a marvelous place with its own culture, customs and traditions, with various nature and landscape. There you can find deserts, mountains and sunny beaches. It seems refreshingly free of class prejudice. Sometimes people there are rough and straightforward, but they take you for what you are, and are less concerned with how you speak, what job you do, where you went to school etc. I enjoy meeting people from many walks of life and treating each other as equals. I would like to visit Australia one day and to make sure myself that stereotypes about Australians don’t work.  

It been a long period passed that time and at present day Australia is a highly developed modern state with its own peculiarities. It is a country of vast valleys, hills, great forests and desserts at the same time. A country of contrasts where Aboriginal art exists along with hi-tech technologies, a country of origin for kangaroo and koala, a country of great construction projects.

Australian visual arts have a long history, starting with the cave and bark paintings of its indigenous peoples. From the time of European settlement, a common theme in Australian art has been the Australian landscape, seen for example in the works of Arthur Streeton, Arthur Boyd, and Albert Namatjira.

In this work the observing of the main structural and traditional features of the country was carried out. The information collected and analyzed can be a good resource for the students learning English. The summarized information can lead to the conclusion that Australia is a country where both old and new traditions exist in harmony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

1. About Biodiversity. Department of the Environment and Heritage. 2003

2. Baker J., The Australian Language. Sidney: second edition, 1966.

3. Bell, R. “Americanization and Australia”, UNSW Press. (1998)

4. Donald Denoon, A History of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000

5. Environmental Sustainability Index (pg.112). Yale University. Retrieved on 2007.

6. Gillespie R., Dating the first Australians. 2002

7. Mitchell, Alexander G. (1995) “The Story of Australian English”, Sydney, Dictionary Research Centre.

8. Mount Augustus. The Sydney Morning Herald, 1998

9.  Powell J. M., An Historical Geography of Modern Australia: The Restive Fringe. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988

10. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. Knopf, 1986

11. Rybkina T., Saarinen L., Australia. St. Petersburg, Karo, 2001

12. Sinha, Kounteya, No more the land of snake charmers..., The Times of India, 2006

13. Smith L., The Aboriginal Population of Australia, Press, Canberra, 1980

14. Starkov A.P., Dixon R.R., Ostrovsky B.S., (2001 ) "English" : ACT. p.311

15. Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000

16. Tatz, Colin. Genocide in Australia. AIATSIS Research Discussion Papers No 8. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1999

17. Tomakhin G.D., English-speaking countries. References. M: Prosvescheniye, 1998

18. UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 1980.

19. Weekend Australian, 30-31 December 2000, p. 16

20. Гапонів А. Б., Возна М. О. Лінгвокраїнознавство. Англомовні країни. Підручник для студентів та викладачів вищих навчальних закладів. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2005. –с.367

21. Журина Т.Ю.,  Australia and New Zealand in brief., Москва, издательский дом “Дрофа”, 1997 г., с. 160

22. Коринская В.А., Щенев В.А., Душина И.В. "География".

23. Филипп Стил. Атлас мира. Москва, “Олма-Пресс”, 1998 г., с. 95

24. http://www.5ballov.ru

25. http://www.about-australia.com/facts/

26. http://www.allbest.ru

27. http://australia-ru.com/

28. http://www.austslangdic.com

29. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107296.html

30. http://www.flinders.edu. au/news/articles/

31. http://funfacter.hubpages.com/hub/Fun-Facts-About-Australia

32. http://ref.com.ua/

33. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1803026.cms

34. http://www.victor. sa.gov. au/

35.  http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/fun-facts-about-australia.html

36. http://wanttoknowit.com/interesting-facts-about-australia/

37. http://www.wikipedia.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix to the course paper “Australia”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 2

 

Largest cities in Australia (2008 Australian Bureau of Statistics estimate)[110]
Rank	City Name	State	Pop.	Rank	City Name	State	Pop.
1	Sydney	NSW	4,399,722	11	Hobart	TAS	209,287
2	Melbourne	VIC	3,892,419	12	Geelong	VIC	172,300
3	Brisbane	QLD	1,945,639	13	Townsville	QLD	162,730
4	Perth	WA	1,602,559	14	Cairns	QLD	142,001
5	Adelaide	SA	1,172,105	15	Toowoomba	QLD	125,339
6	Gold Coast-Tweed	QLD / NSW	558,888	16	Darwin	NT	120,652
7	Newcastle	NSW	531,191	17	Launceston	TAS	104,649
8	Canberra-Queanbeyan	ACT / NSW	395,126	18	Albury-Wodonga	NSW / VIC	102,894
9	Wollongong	NSW	284,169	19	Ballarat	VIC	91,787
10	Sunshine Coast	QLD	237,562	20	Bendigo	VIC	88,031

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 3

 

 

Historic population[84]
Year	Indigenous population
pre 1788	350,000 approximate
Year	Non Indigenous population	Increase
1788	900	—
1800	5,200	477.8%
1850	405,400	7,696.2%
Year	Total population	Increase
1900	3,765,300	—
1910	4,525,100	20.2%
1920	5,411,000	19.6%
1930	6,501,000	20.1%
1940	7,078,000	8.9%
1950	8,307,000	17.4%
1960	10,392,000	25.1%
1970	12,663,000	21.9%
1980	14,726,000	16.3%
1990	17,169,000	16.6%
2000	19,169,100	11.6%
2009	21,828,704	13.6%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix 4

Commonwealth of Australia
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem:Advance Australia FairN1
Capital		Canberra
Largest city		Sydney
Official languages		NoneN2
National language		English (de facto)N2
Demonym		Australian,Aussie[1][2] (colloquial)
Government		Federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, see Government of Australia
-	Monarch	Queen Elizabeth II
-	Governor-General	Quentin Bryce
-	Prime Minister	Kevin Rudd
Independence		from the United Kingdom
-	Constitution	1 January 1901
-	Statute of Westminster	11 December 1931
-	Statute of Westminster Adoption Act	9 October 1942 (with effect from 3 September 1939)
-	Australia Act	3 March 1986
Area
-	Total	7,617,930km2(6th)2,941,299sqmi
Population
-	2010estimate	22,115,847[3](51st)
-	2006census	19,855,288[4]
-	Density	2.833/km2(232nd)7.3/sqmi
GDP(PPP)		2008estimate
-	Total	$799.054 billion[5](18th)
-	Per capita	$36,918[5](15th)
GDP (nominal)		2008estimate
-	Total	$1.013 trillion[5](14th)
-	Per capita	$46,824[5](13th)
HDI(2007)		▲ 0.970[6](veryhigh)(2nd)
Currency		Australian dollar (AUD)