New Zealand English
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".
[8] 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).
[12] Further lexicographical work culminated in the 1,374-page The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary published in 2004, by Tony Deverson and Graeme Kennedy.
[citation needed] The NZ Dictionary Centre ceased active operations after the retirement of its second Director, Dianne Bardsley, in 2012.
[15] 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.
[21] When in 1788 the colony of New South Wales was formed, most of New Zealand was nominally included, but no real legal authority or control was exercised.
As a non-sovereign nation, New Zealand remained ungoverned and most European settlers intermarried with and lived among the Māori iwi in harmony.
[22] The first official missionaries, who were from England, arrived in New Zealand in 1814, bringing formal education and farming skills as well as Christianity to the communities, many of which by this time had become bi-lingual.
[25] From this point there was considerable European settlement, primarily from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and to a lesser extent the United States, South Africa, and various parts of continental Europe.
After the Treaty of Waitangi, the next few years saw tensions grow over disputed land purchases by settlers as well as some communities refusing to accept British rule.
[26] The colonial government summoned thousands of British troops from Britain and Australia, as well as locally recruited pro-British militia forces, to mount major campaigns to overpower the Māori and Māori-allied separatist movements, eventually resulting in the defeat of the rebel forces.
[31] 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".
[32] The New Zealand accent first appeared in towns with mixed populations of immigrants from Australia, England, Ireland, and Scotland.
Americanisation of New Zealand society and language has subtly and gradually been taking place since World War II and especially since the 1970s.
[37] In 2018, MP Clayton Mitchell of New Zealand First put forward a bill for English to be recognised as an official language in legislation.
General New Zealand English is non-rhotic, however Southland is semi-rhotic due to the accent's Scottish influence.
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.
[citation needed] New Zealand English terms of Australian origin include bushed (lost or bewildered), chunder (to vomit), drongo (a foolish or stupid person), fossick (to search), larrikin (mischievous person), Maccas (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).
[46] Some examples of such words in New Zealand English are the preferred usage of the American bobby pin over the British hair pin,[47] muffler for silencer,[48] truck for lorry, station wagon for estate car,[49] stove for cooker, creek[50] over brook or stream, eggplant for aubergine, median strip for central reservation,[51] pushup for press-up, and potato chip for potato crisp.
[52] Other examples of vocabulary directly borrowed from American English include the boonies, bucks (dollars), butt (bum or arse), ding (dent), dude, duplex, faggot or fag (interchangeable with the British poof and poofter), figure[53] (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),[54] sheltered workshop (workplace for disabled persons),[55] spat[56] (a small argument), and subdivision, and tavern.
[90] This rising intonation can also be heard at the end of statements that are not in response to a question but to which the speaker wishes to add emphasis.
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.
Political discussion and analysis of issues of sovereignty, environmental management, health, and social well-being thus rely on Māori at least in part.
[96] Taranaki has been said to have a minor regional accent, possibly due to the high number of immigrants from the south-west of England.
Comedian Billy T. James and the bro'Town TV programme were notable for featuring exaggerated versions of this.
[104] The same study proposed that differences in the relative number of tense and lax vowels between the two speaker groups may have influenced the speaking and articulation rates.
