Introduction

Learn about what makes New Zealand English distinctive—from the words we use to the way we speak them.

New Zealand English is a distinctive regional variety of World English along with Australian English, British English, Canadian English, American English, South African English and a host of other, newer forms of English.

The distinguishing features of our regional language variety include linguistic features such as lexis, grammar and syntax, pronunciation, and spelling. Extralinguistic features include geographic spread, origin and numbers of speakers, chronology or history, and the existence of a national lexicon and literature.

New Zealand English lexis

New Zealand English is one of three languages of New Zealand, along with te reo Maori and New Zealand Sign Language. Its lexis is made up of distinctive parts of our South Pacific culture, its institutions, and its inhabitants, of the characteristics of our geographic position and its elements, and of our indigenous flora and fauna.

Some words, therefore, are eponyms, words based on a personal name within our culture, such as Perendale, Plunket, and Ranfurly Shield. Some are toponyms, words based on a particular place, e.g., Corriedale, Onehunga weed, and Tapanui flu.

Terms borrowed from Maori, like totara and hāpuku, name our flora and fauna. Pākehā, Palangi, and afakasi are names given to people in New Zealand, but not in Hong Kong or Sweden.

Governments, government departments, and government policies generate distinctive terms such as pepper-potting, state house, DoC, Think Big, and Kiwi Made. We form words in a playful way, in using diminutives and hypocoristics, such as possie, Swannie and Kune, and give pet names to people, buildings and places, such as Pine Tree (Meads), the Beehive and the Cake Tin. We form compound words from within English (such as woolshed) and with loan words (such as cyberhui).

We take terms from other varieties of English and adapt them as our own, such as tall ponga from tall poppy, and Paintergate from Watergate. Distinctive New Zealand proprietary names, such as Gladwrap, Jandal, and Zip, also contribute to the lexicon.

While we share many slang terms with the Australian English variety, we also generate many terms of our own. We can be a box of birds, a howlybag, or have something munted or puckerooed.

Like citizens in all modern cultures, we abbreviate, and use acronyms and initialisms, such as WINZ and DPB. We have taken a host of terms for universal referents from other forms of English and given them new senses or meanings in New Zealand English.

A database of more than 40,000 New Zealand English terms and usages is maintained at the New Zealand Dictionary Centre at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

Speaking New Zealand English

How we speak as well as what we say makes New Zealand English distinctive. The New Zealand way of speaking is often commented on by lay persons in letters to newspaper editors, frequently by way of complaint that the young people of today can no longer make a distinction between beer and bear, or that they seem to be saying that a car is fitted with ear bags.

These patterns of speaking are part of the emerging New Zealand identity, but there are other patterns that are more well-established and that are cited as distinguishing us as New Zealanders from speakers of other varieties, such as Australian English. These include saying pen in a way that Australians and others might hear as pin, and so on.

Various studies carried out by Bauer, Holmes, and Warren at this university—as well as by others such as Gordon and Maclagan at the University of Canterbury—provide the background to patterns of New Zealand pronunciation.

The extensive work of Holmes in sociolinguistics provides us with patterns relating to gender and social differences (e.g. Holmes 1997; Stubbe & Holmes 1995), and to workplace interaction (Holmes & Stubbe 2004).