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.

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 Māori.

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 had been 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 Māori 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 recognized 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 Māori 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 ⟨ɹ⟩ 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 loan words have also been taken from the Māori 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 & while and amidst & amid.

Australian English influences

Many New Zealand English terms have their origins in Australia. The best-known one is the use of the word mate to mean friend, or buddy, or simply person, as in "G'day mate, how are ya?" or "cheers, mate!" Although it is originally an early British usage adopted and adapted in Australia, it is used in New Zealand exactly as in Australian usage. Māori tend to use the word bro in the same way although this is no longer exclusively a Māori usage. Other Australian words that have become part of the New Zealand vocabulary are coo-ee which was originally an aboriginal term meaning ‘to come’ and which has been used as an all-purpose call to summon someone in for their lunch etc. It exists in NZE in the phrase "within coo-ee" meaning 'near'. "Tall poppy" originated in Australia as a negatively loaded reference to someone who stood out from the crowd (e.g. by being particularly bright or successful). It has been adopted and adapted in New Zealand, giving "tall poppyitis" (a variant of "Tall Poppy Syndrome"), "tall poppy pruning", etc., as well as homegrown equivalents like "tall ponga" (the ponga is a native tree fern).

Other 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), station (for a large farm), pom or pommy (an Englishman), wowser (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, license 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:

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]".

Māori influence

Many local everyday words have been borrowed from the Māori language, including words for local flora, fauna, place names and the natural environment.

The dominant influence of Māori 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 Māori origin at approximately 0.6%, mostly place and personal names.

The everyday use of Māori words, usually colloquial, occurs most prominently among youth, young adults and Māori populations. Examples include words like kia ora ("hello"), or kai ("food") which almost all New Zealanders know.

Māori 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 Māori (under certain circumstances, and when requested). Political discussion and analysis of issues of sovereignty, environmental management, health, and social well-being thus rely on Māori at least in part. Māori 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 /ʍ/ ~ /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 Māori have an accent distinct from the general New Zealand accent, tending to use Māori words more frequently. Bro'Town was a TV programme that exaggerated Māori, Polynesian, and other accents. Linguists recognise two main New Zealand accents, denoted "Pākehā English" and "Māori English"; with the latter strongly influenced by syllable-timed Māori speech patterns. Pākehā English is beginning to adopt similar rhythms, distinguishing it from other stress-timed English accents.

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