Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2.7 (B-), University of Regensburg (Anglistics-American Studies), 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: English is the most important language of the world today. Last century’s quantum leaps ininformation ...

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2.7 (B-), University of Regensburg (Anglistics-American Studies), language: English, abstract: English is the most important language of the world today. Last century’s quantum leaps ininformation technologies, like the Internet, enabled us for the first time in history tocommunicate with people from all over the world. The world-wide transfer of information ina global community requires a lingua franca, a language that is understood and can be usedby everybody. Artificial languages, like Esperanto, have not attracted many learners - alanguage without a past can have no future.Instead, English and its numberless variants seem to be able to solve communicationproblems in the future. No other language is so widespread, so commonly understood aroundthe globe. Obviously, the outstanding position of the USA in the fields of politics, economicsscience, and - most important - popular culture like pop music and cinema has contributed tothis fact.The British Empire has laid the fundament for this development by founding colonies allover the world, exporting their language even to the opposite side of the globe - Australia andNew Zealand. Like everything else alive, languages in use are subject to change anddevelopment, especially in colonies, as new words are needed for new discoveries and ideasor just to simplify communication with natives. Sometimes new ways of pronunciation comeinto fashion and spread until everyone has adjusted to them. In the course of the centurieseven completely new languages can come into existence this way.In this paper I will examine linguistic particularities of Australian English (AusE) and NewZealand English (NZE) to find out if they are languages of their own, creoles or just variantsof English. In order to make their development better understandable, I will combinehistorical facts about colonists, natives and language developments with linguistic analyses oftoday’s Australian and New Zealand English.