New Zealand English is essentially the English somebody forgot to take out of their back pocket before putting their jeans through the laundry.

—Hamish Ritchie

Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement.

—Öjevind Lång

(https://ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html#English_Specific_Varieties, November 20, 2014)

Although National Geographic seems to have difficulty distinguishing Australian from New Zealand English, it would be doing both dialects a disservice to lump them in one pot together. Yes, yes, I know there are people who cannot reliably hear the differences between the major dialects of North America, either, or of the British Isles for that matter, but let’s have a look at what makes New Zealand English unique.

First of all, there are a number of words found in Kiwi English that other dialects simply do not possess. New Zealanders regard thongs as some sort of sexual perversion and put their feet into jandals instead. If you ask someone for permission, e.g. to use their phone, their approval will be given with Sweet as. A bach (pronounced batch, not like Johann Sebastian or Jacques Offen) is a bachelor’s hut or dwelling, a simple holiday home with kitchen-living room and a couple of bedrooms, often near the coast. And, NatGeo, Holiday Parks is a brand name, not the generic, which is motorcamp (which would be a caravan park in Strine). The activity I love most in New Zealand is tramping, which would be hiking for the rest of the world.

The Scottish influence in European immigration to New Zealand has left a couple of traces in the language as well, the most obvious being the use of wee to mean small, as well as some phonological traces in the deep south, such as the country bumpkin accent found in Otago and Southland with its distinctive rhotic “r”.

While on the topic of phonology there is a suite of differences with regard to the length of the short a, short e and short i vowels, which, in relation to Received Standard, appear to be shifted one to the right, leaving us with the problem of what the short i (as in fish’n’chips) has become. To my ear it sounds like something between the German short ü, and the undifferentiated ə sound that English enlists to pronounce unstressed instances of e and i. In any case, it requires considerable practice to pronounce correctly, and is nothing even remotely like what is suggested by the transliteration fush’n’chups.

In any case it leads to great phonetic confusion, since English abounds in sets of words that contain two or three members in a relationship like this: pan -> pen -> pin. You might hear something like, “We are now sitting on the dick,” and wondering what further thrills await you, until you realise that “deck” (patio/veranda) was meant. This vowel shift also extends to the diphthong pair ɪə and eə, which would otherwise distinguish beer from bear, cheer from chair, with the former pronunciation becoming standard for both words.

But by far the greatest difference is the incorporation of Maori words into English with the result that it is impossible to read a newspaper without encountering an unfamiliar word or two. At the conference in 2009 we were treated to a powhiri, complete with haka, and hongi for our leaders, which made us tangata whenua for the duration of the meeting. No New Zealander worth their salt would blink an eye at any of the Maori words in the preceding sentence, although most other English speakers would have difficulty figuring out the meanings, even from the context. And as we were on the topic of fish’n’chips, or at least the correct pronunciation of such, be warned that ordering it as such in a fish’n’chip shop is a pointless exercise. In contrast to Australia where you would be happily served with a bit of shark with the fried potatoes, in New Zealand you have to decide which of the fish it is you want. And then all the fish names are in Maori, so you’d better study up the posters in the shop, else you’ll end up with paua, when what you wanted was more like tarakihi. In fact, though, you may not be familiar with many of the fish on offer, and often they do not even have common English names, so your fish’n’chips dinner may turn out to be some native delight.

In general, though, the Maori influence on English is not simply confined to the introduction of a kind of pidgin into the mainstream, like the greetings, “Nau mai, haere mai” and, “Kia ora”, but Maori culture and language are flourishing on their own. My chairperson at the 2009 Christchurch conference held her greeting speech in both Maori and English, which appeared to be something almost expected of an educated person.