New Zealand English (NZE) is the variant of the English language spoken by most English-speaking New Zealanders. Its language code in ISO and Internet standards is en-NZ. English is one of New Zealand's three official languages (along with New Zealand Sign Language and the M?ori language) and is the first language of the majority of the population.
The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and become distinctive only in the last 150 years". The most distinctive influences on New Zealand English have come from Australian English, English in southern England, Irish English, Scottish English, the prestige Received Pronunciation (RP), and M?ori. New Zealand English is most similar to Australian English in pronunciation, with some key differences.
Video New Zealand English
Dictionaries
The first comprehensive dictionary dedicated to New Zealand English was probably the Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary, published in 1979. Edited by Harry Orsman (1928-2002), it is a 1,337-page book, with information relating to the usage and pronunciation of terms that were widely accepted throughout the English-speaking world and those peculiar to New Zealand. It includes a one-page list of the approximate date of entry into common parlance of the many terms found in New Zealand English but not elsewhere, such as "haka" (1827), "Boohai" (1920), and "bach" (1905). A second edition was published in 1989 with the cover subtitle "the first dictionary of New Zealand English and New Zealand pronunciation". A third edition, edited by Nelson Wattie, was published as The Reed Dictionary of New Zealand English by Reed Publishing in 2001.
Orsman's next dictionary achievement was The New Zealand Dictionary, published by New House Publishers in 1994. It was co-edited by Elizabeth Orsman. A second edition was published in 1995, edited by Elizabeth Orsman.
In 1997, Oxford University Press produced the Harry Orsman-edited The Dictionary of New Zealand English: A Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles, a 981-page book which it claimed was based on over 40 years of research. This research started with Orsman's 1951 thesis and continued with his editing this dictionary. To assist with and maintain this work, the New Zealand Dictionary Centre was founded in 1997. It has published several more dictionaries of New Zealand English, including The New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary, edited by New Zealand lexicographer Tony Deverson in 1998, culminating in the 1,374-page The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary in 2004, by Tony Deverson and Graeme Kennedy. A second, revised edition of The New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary was published in 2006, this time using standard lexicographical regional markers to identify the New Zealand content, which were absent from the first edition.
Another authoritative work is the Collins English Dictionary first published in 1979 by HarperCollins, which contains an abundance of well-cited New Zealand words and phrases, drawing from the 650 million word Bank of English, a British research facility set up at the University of Birmingham in 1980 and funded by Collins publishers. Although this is a British dictionary of International English there has always been a credited New Zealand advisor for the New Zealand content, namely Professor Ian Gordon from 1979 until 2002 and Professor Elizabeth Gordon from the University of Canterbury since 2003. New Zealand-specific dictionaries compiled from the Collins English Dictionary include the Collins New Zealand Concise English Dictionary (1982), Collins New Zealand School Dictionary (1999) and Collins New Zealand Paperback Dictionary (2009.)
Australia's Macquarie Dictionary was first published in 1981, and has since become the authority on Australian English. It has always included an abundance of New Zealand words and phrases additional to the mutually shared words and phrases of both countries. Every edition has retained a New Zealander as advisor for the New Zealand content, the first being Harry Orsman and the most recent being noted New Zealand lexicographer Laurie Bauer.
A more light-hearted look at English as spoken in New Zealand, A Personal Kiwi-Yankee Dictionary, was written by the American-born University of Otago psychology lecturer Louis Leland in 1980. This slim volume lists many of the potentially confusing and/or misleading terms for Americans visiting or emigrating to New Zealand. A second edition was published in 1990.
Maps New Zealand English
Historical development
From the 1790s, New Zealand was visited by British, French and American whaling, sealing and trading ships. Their crews traded European goods with the indigenous M?ori. The first settlers to New Zealand were mainly from Australia, many of them ex-convicts or escaped convicts. Sailors, explorers and traders from Australia and other parts of Europe also settled.
In 1788 the colony of New South Wales of Australia was founded. The colony included most of New Zealand except for the southern half of the South Island. Formed two years prior in London, the New Zealand Company announced in 1839 its plans to establish colonies in New Zealand. The continuing lawlessness of the informally established Australian and European settlers spurred the British to take better control of the colony which until then they had largely ignored, having concentrated mainly on managing Australia.
From the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 there was considerable European settlement, primarily from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland; and to a lesser extent the United States, India, China, and various parts of continental Europe. Some 400,000 settlers came from Britain, of whom 300,000 stayed permanently. Most were young people and 250,000 babies were born. New Zealand ceased to be part of New South Wales and became a British colony on 1 July 1841.
Gold discoveries in Otago (1861) and Westland (1865), caused a worldwide gold rush that more than doubled the population from 71,000 in 1859 to 164,000 in 1863. Between 1864 and 1865, under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, 13 ships carrying citizens of England, Ireland and South Africa arrived to New Zealand under the Waikato Immigration Scheme. In the 1870s and 1880s, several thousand Chinese men, mostly from Guangdong province, migrated to New Zealand to work on the South Island goldfields. Although the first Chinese migrants had been invited by the Otago Provincial government they quickly became the target of hostility from settlers and laws were enacted specifically to discourage them from coming to New Zealand thereafter. The European population of New Zealand grew explosively from fewer than 1000 in 1831 to 500,000 by 1881. By 1911 the number of European settlers had reached a million. This colourful history of unofficial and official settlement of peoples from all over Europe, Australia, South Africa, and Asia and the intermingling of the people with the indigenous M?ori brought about what would eventually evolve into a "New Zealand accent" and a unique regional English lexicon.
A distinct New Zealand variant of the English language has been recognised since at least 1912, when Frank Arthur Swinnerton described it as a "carefully modulated murmur". From the beginning of the haphazard Australian and European settlements and latter official British migrations, a new dialect began to form by adopting M?ori words to describe the different flora and fauna of New Zealand, for which English did not have words of its own.
The New Zealand accent appeared first in towns with mixed populations of immigrants from Australia, England, Ireland, and Scotland. These included the militia towns of the North Island and the gold-mining towns of the South Island. In more homogeneous towns such as those in Otago and Southland, settled mainly by people from Scotland, the New Zealand accent took longer to appear.
Since the latter 20th century New Zealand society has gradually divested itself of its fundamentally British roots and has adopted influences from all over the world, especially in the early 21st century when New Zealand experienced an increase of non-British immigration which has since brought about a more prominent multi-national society. The Internet, television, movies and popular music have all brought international influences into New Zealand society and the New Zealand lexicon. Americanization of New Zealand society and language has subtly and gradually been taking place since World War II and especially since the 1970s, as has happened also in neighbouring Australia.
Phonology
Not all New Zealanders have the same accent, as the level of cultivation (i.e. the closeness to Received Pronunciation) of every speaker's accent differs. The phonology in this section is of an educated speaker of New Zealand English, and uses a transcription system designed by Bauer et al. (2007) specifically to faithfully represent the New Zealand accent. It transcribes some of the vowels differently, whereas the approximant /r/ is transcribed with the symbol ??? even in phonemic transcription.
Vocabulary
There are a number of dialectal words and phrases used in New Zealand English. These are mostly informal terms that are more common in casual speech. A considerable number of loanwords have also been taken from the M?ori language as well as from Australian English. (see the separate section, below).
New Zealand adopted decimal currency in 1967 and the metric system in 1974. Despite this, several imperial measures are still widely encountered and usually understood, such as feet and inches for a person's height, pounds and ounces for an infant's birth weight, and in colloquial terms such as referring to drinks in pints. In the food manufacturing industry in New Zealand both metric and non-metric systems of weight are used and usually understood owing to raw food products being imported from both metric and non-metric countries. However per the December 1976 Weights and Measures Amendment Act, all foodstuffs must be retailed using the metric system. In general, the knowledge of non-metric units is lessening.
The word spud for potato, now common throughout the English-speaking world, originated in New Zealand English.
As with Australian English, but in contrast to most other forms of the language, some speakers of New Zealand English use both the terms bath and bathe as verbs, with bath used as a transitive verb (e.g. I will bath the dog), and bathe used predominantly, but not exclusively, as an intransitive verb (e.g. Did you bathe?).
Both the words amongst and among are used, as in British English. The same is true for two other pairs, whilst and while and amidst and amid.
Australian English influences
Many New Zealand English terms have their origins in Australia.
Some Australian terms present in NZE include bushed (lost or bewildered), chunder (to vomit), dinkum (genuine or real), drongo (a foolish or stupid person), fossick (to search), jumbuck (sheep, from Australian pidgin), larrikin (mischievous person), Maccas (21st Century slang for McDonald's food), maimai (a duckshooter's hide; originally a makeshift shelter, from aboriginal mia-mia), paddock (field, or meadow), pom or pommy (an Englishman), skite (verb: to boast), station (for a very large farm), wowser (non-drinker of alcohol, or killjoy), and ute (pickup truck).
American English influences
Advancing from its British and Australian English origins, New Zealand English has developed to include many Americanisms and American vocabulary in preference over British terms as well as directly borrowed American vocabulary. Some examples of American words used instead of British words in New Zealand English are bobby pin for British hair pin, muffler for the British silencer, truck for the British lorry, station wagon for the British estate car, stove over cooker, creek over brook, hope chest over bottom drawer, eggplant instead of aubergine, hardware store instead of ironmonger, median strip for central reservation, stroller for pushchair, pushup for press-up, potato chip instead of potato crisp, licence plate for registration plate, cellphone or cell for British and Australian mobile phone and mobile, and ice block instead of British ice lolly (or Australian icy pole.)
Directly borrowed American vocabulary include the boonies, bucks (dollars), bushwhack (fell timber), butt (replacing British/Australian arse although arse can still be used), ding (dent), dude, duplex, faggot and fag (replacing British poof and poofter), figure (to think or conclude; consider), hightail it, homeboy, hooker, lagoon, lube (oil change), man (in place of mate or bro in direct address), major (to study or qualify in a subject), to be over [some situation] (be fed up), rig (large truck), sheltered workshop (workplace for disabled persons), spat (a small argument), subdivision, and tavern.
New Zealandisms
In addition to word and phrase borrowings from Australian, British and American English, New Zealand has its own unique words and phrases derived entirely in New Zealand. Not considering slang, some of these New Zealandisms are:
- Aussie (noun) - Australia. This extension of the term to mean the country is unique to New Zealand. In Australia and internationally, Aussie means Australian (person or thing), as opposed to Australia (the country.) The normal adjectival usage is also used in New Zealand
- big-huge (adj) - large object ("big-huge building"), extensive ("big-huge mess"), glaring ("big-huge mistake")
- choice! (interj) - one-word rejoinder expressing satisfaction
- chur (interj) - many uses, the most common being a form of greeting, or a contraction of "cheers" most commonly heard in "chur, bro". It is also used as an alternative to "good on you"
- dairy (noun) - corner shop; convenience store
- fang it (phrase) - to go fast.
- Gib board, Gibraltar board (noun) - the common NZ term for drywall, plasterboard interior wall lining (a genericised trademark; Gib(TM) is a trademark of Winstone Wallboards Ltd)
- Good as gold (phrase) - All is well (found in other forms of English as well)
- handle (noun) - the pint (actually 500 mL) glass of beer with a handle, as sold in pubs
- hardout/hard - used to show agreement, or used to show emphasis/intensity. Examples: Agreement: "Yeah hard/hardout". "He was running hardout."
- heaps (adjective, adverb) - abundant, plenty, plentifully. Examples: "There are heaps of cops surrounding the house." "I love you heaps." "Give it heaps!" - Give it your best effort!
- hokey pokey (noun) - the New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee; also a flavour of ice cream consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid lumps of honeycomb toffee.
- jandals (noun) - the NZ term for flip-flops. Originally a trademarked name derived from 'Japanese sandals'.
- Kiwi (adj) - Not only does Kiwi mean 'a New Zealand person', but it is sometimes used to replace the word New Zealand in NZ businesses or titles, such as KiwiRail and Kiwibank or New Zealand-related nouns, e.g. "Kiwi-ism". It is also used to address something that is particularly related to New Zealand, e.g. "that house is pretty kiwi"
- luncheon sausage (noun) - devon sausage (also called "fritz" or "belgium" in some parts of New Zealand)
- metal road (noun) - a dirt road overlaid with gravel to assist drainage and keep dust down, typically found in rural settings
- munted (adj, slang) - a) destroyed; trashed; broken, b) of a person, weird or odd
- polony (noun) - a small cocktail sausage, about 5 centimetres (2.0 in) long, dyed red and made of mixed processed meats. Usually served and eaten with toothpicks. Polony has other meanings in Australia, South Africa and the UK
- pooped (adj) - tired, exhausted (found in other forms of English as well)
- puckerood (adj) - broken; busted; wrecked. From M?ori "pakaru" - to shatter
- ranchslider, ranch slider, (noun) - the universal NZ term for a sliding door, usually of aluminium frame and containing glass panels (a genericised trademark; Ranchslider(TM) is a registered trademark of Fletcher Window & Door Systems).
- rark up (verb) - to criticise, confront or hurry along
- rattle your dags! (phrase) - hurry up! Dags are faeces stuck to the wool of a sheep, which rattle if dry
- rough as guts (phrase) - of machinery, not working properly; of behaviour uncouth or unacceptable (this also in UK)
- scroggin - a nutritious snack taken along on hikes by trampers
- scull (verb) - to drink a glass or handle (see above) of beer in one go
- She'll be right (phrase) - it will be fine
- shingle (noun) - gravel. A shingle road is an un-sealed road
- shot - (acknowledgement or interj)
- thank you
- to express joy
- give praise; well done!
- stoked (adv) - very pleased; delighted
- sweet as!' (interj) - Cool! Awesome!
- tar seal road (noun) - chipseal road
- tiki tour (noun) - a guided tour; exploration; a meandering route taken in order to waste time
- togs (noun) - informal term for swimsuit (either gender)
- town house (noun) - a small self-contained, free standing house with little or no back yard, often with a shared driveway with neighbouring houses. The NZ meaning is unique and differs from the American, Asian, Australian and European meaning of townhouse (typically terraced houses) as well as the older UK meaning (city houses of nobility)
- tramping (noun) tramp (verb) - Bushwalking, hiking. Usage is exclusive to New Zealand
- tucker (noun) - food
- up the boohai / up the Puhoi [River] / in the wop wops - to be lost or stranded, of unknown whereabouts or when unwilling to divulge whereabouts. In the outback, or in the boondocks
- wee (adjective) - 1) a short time, a little bit, as in "my chicken was a wee bit overcooked." 2) small, little, as in "he was a wee boy." This is directly from Scottish English and is in common formal use throughout New Zealand whereas in other English speaking countries, apart from Scotland and Northern Ireland, this usage is uncommon or used only informally. It is not part of Australian English, for example
- whiteware - major kitchen appliances (white goods in UK)
Differences from Australian English
Many of these relate to words used to refer to common items, often based on which major brands become eponyms.
Usage
Some New Zealanders will often reply to a question with a statement spoken with a rising intonation at the end. This often has the effect of making their statement sound like another question. There is enough awareness of this that it is seen in exaggerated form in comedy parody of New Zealanders, such as in the Classic 1970s comedy character Lyn Of Tawa. This rising intonation can also be heard at the end of statements, which are not in response to a question but to which the speaker wishes to add emphasis. High rising terminals are also heard in Australia.
In informal speech, some New Zealanders use the third person feminine she in place of the third person neuter it as the subject of a sentence, especially when the subject is the first word of the sentence. The most common use of this is in the phrase "She'll be right" meaning either "It will be okay" or "It is close enough to what is required". Similar to Australian English are uses such as "she was great car" or "she's a real beauty, this [object]".
M?ori influence
Many local everyday words have been borrowed from the M?ori language, including words for local flora, fauna, place names and the natural environment.
The dominant influence of M?ori on New Zealand English is lexical. A 1999 estimate based on the Wellington corpora of written and spoken New Zealand English put the proportion of words of M?ori origin at approximately 0.6%, mostly place and personal names.
The everyday use of M?ori words, usually colloquial, occurs most prominently among youth, young adults and M?ori populations. Examples include words like kia ora ("hello"), or kai ("food") which almost all New Zealanders know.
M?ori is ever present and has a significant conceptual influence in the legislature, government, and community agencies (e.g. health and education), where legislation requires that proceedings and documents be translated into M?ori (under certain circumstances, and when requested). Political discussion and analysis of issues of sovereignty, environmental management, health, and social well-being thus rely on M?ori at least in part. M?ori as a spoken language is particularly important wherever community consultation occurs.
Dialects
Recognisable regional variations are slight, with the exception of Southland and the southern part of neighbouring Otago, where the "Southland burr" (see above) is heard. This southern area formed a traditional repository of immigration from Scotland (see Dunedin). Several words and phrases common in Scots or Scottish English persist in this area: examples include the use of wee to mean "small", and phrases such as to do the messages meaning "to go shopping". Recent research (2012) suggests that postvocalic /r/ is not restricted to Southland, but is found also in the central North Island where there may be a Pasifika influence, but also a possible influence from modern New Zealand hip-hop music, which has been shown to have high levels of non-prevocalic /r/ after the NURSE vowel. Other Southland features that have been identified and which may also relate to early Scottish settlement are the use of the TRAP in a set of BATH words (dance, castle), which is also found in some Australia English regions, and in the maintenance of the /?/ ~ /w/ distinction (e.g. which and witch are not homophonous for such speakers).
Taranaki has been said to have a minor regional accent, possibly due to the high number of immigrants from the South-West of England, however this becoming less pronounced.
Some M?ori have an accent distinct from the general New Zealand accent, tending to use M?ori words more frequently. Bro'Town was a TV programme that exaggerated M?ori, Polynesian, and other accents. Linguists recognise two main New Zealand accents, denoted "P?keh? English" and "M?ori English"; with the latter strongly influenced by syllable-timed M?ori speech patterns. P?keh? English is beginning to adopt similar rhythms, distinguishing it from other stress-timed English accents.
Spelling
- Where there is a difference between British and US spelling (such as cancelling/canceling and jewellery/jewelry), the British spelling of double-L is universally used. The British use of single-L is also universally used in words such as enrol.
- New Zealanders use tyres, not tires, except for trademarks such as Cooper Tires.
- The Commonwealth spelling of kerb is used over US curb.
- New Zealand spelling of -re words such as centre, mitre, litre, and theatre have always officially followed the British spelling as opposed to American center, miter, liter, and theater, although in practice American spellings are often used such as in Real Estate listings, buy-and-sell websites such as Trade Me, AutoTrader, and others.
- Words with the -ce suffix such as defence, and pretence are always spelt with -ce as opposed to the American defense, and pretense.
- With -our words like colour/color or behaviour/behavior the spelling of -our is always used unless a Trademark, such as Colorsteel or The Color Run, etc. Foreign official awards such as the FBI Medal Of Valor always retain their US spelling in New Zealand texts. Additionally the online version of The New Zealand Herald newspaper republishes articles with US spelling when the original article is written with US spelling, such as articles from the Associated Press. Since the advent of Word Processors with spell-checkers, in modern assignment writing in New Zealand universities the rule is to use either 100% British spelling or 100% American spelling, the emphasis being consistency.
- For words ending -(e)ment as in judg(e)ment, either spelling is acceptable in New Zealand usage, although -ement is the preferred British usage.
- New Zealand English retains the distinctions between program ("computer heuristic") and programme ("schedule", "broadcast show"), disk ("information storage device") and disc ("flat circular object"), and analog (as in analog stick) and analogue (all other senses) as found in British and often in Australian English.
- It is usual to form past tenses and past participles of certain verbs with -t and not -ed in New Zealand English. For example, learn becomes learnt, spoil becomes spoilt, burn becomes burnt, dream becomes dreamt /d?emt/, and lean becomes leant /lent/. These verb forms are pronounced with a final unvoiced /t/ sound, meaning spoilt is pronounced /spoelt/ not /spoeld/. This contrasts with American English, where -ed is far more common and is pronounced /d/ (e.g. dwelled /dweld/ is an American form of dwelt /dwelt/. Learned, the adjective meaning "wise", is universally spelt thus and pronounced as two syllables (/'l?:n?d/). The past tenses and past participles of earn and boil are earned and boiled respectively, though they may be pronounced ending with a /t/ sound.
- Words with the digraphs ae and oe in British English are usually spelt as such in New Zealand English (e.g. faeces not feces) rather than with just e as with American English. There are some exceptions where certain words are becoming universally spelt with e such as encyclopaedia, chamaeleon, hyaena, and homoeopathy which are now spelt encyclopedia, chameleon, hyena, and homeopathy respectively. Coincidentally, this is also occurring in British English in these cases too.
- In hyperbolic statements, the spellings of ton and tons are commonly used (e.g. I have tons of friends and I feel tons better), despite the metric system with its tonne having been introduced in the 1970s.
- In words that may be spelt with either an -ise or an -ize suffix (such as organise/organize) New Zealand English, like Australian English, mainly prefers -ise. This contrasts with American English, where -ize is generally preferred, and British English, where -ise is also generally preferred but by some, including the Oxford Dictionary, -ize is preferred. In New Zealand it is not wrong to use either spelling.
- New Zealand favours fiord over fjord, unlike most other English-speaking countries. The fiord spelling was the normal one in English until the early 1920s, and is preserved in many place names worldwide. In New Zealand it is used in Fiordland, a rugged region in the south-west.</ref> although fjord is not unseen.
- When spelling words with macrons borrowed from M?ori, New Zealand English can either spell them with macrons or without (e.g. Maori and M?ori are both accepted spellings). In informal writing, macrons are not usually kept. New Zealand tends to spell these words with macrons more often than other countries and there is a growing tendency to do so.
- New Zealand always uses jail over British and Australian gaol.
- Gram, the unit of mass, is commonly spelt as such and not gramme, which is somewhat found in British English. The same holds true for the word's derivates (e.g. kilogram is more common than kilogramme).
- All abbreviations of words where the last letter of the abbreviation corresponds to the last letter of the full-length word are abbreviated without a full stop in New Zealand English. Thus the abbreviation of Doctor is Dr and the abbreviation of Mister is Mr do not have full stops after them, as opposed to Dr. and Mr. in American English. Initialisms and acronyms such as USA and NASA (or Nasa), are also abbreviated without full stops in New Zealand English. This practice has been in place in New Zealand since the late 1970s.
See also
- Culture of New Zealand
- New Zealand humour
- Regional accents of English
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
- New Zealand Slang
- Origins of New Zealand English
- The Origins of New Zealand English Project at the University of Canterbury
- New Zealand Dictionary Centre
- New Zealand English in the 21st century
- Kiwi Words & Phrases
- One News: Kiwi Accent
- New Zild - The Story of New Zealand English
- English, Maori, and Maori English in New Zealand
- The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary
- The Ultimate Traveller's Guide To New Zealand Slang
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