Phonology
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy1cOn5vGc4
Fig. 3
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_English
Fig. 4
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgWnQVfY3mE
Fig. 5
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgzcnxitww0
Fig. 6
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoF_fa9TMDk
Fig. 7
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlDXZywedvc
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VowelsThe pronunciation of vowels is one of the first things an English speaker will notice when listening to a speaker of a different English dialect. As dialect blogger Ben Trawick-Smith also noted, the direction that the vowels shift in New Zealand English is one of the easiest ways to tell it apart from Australian English or any other dialect of English. Consequently, one of the results of this shift is the centralization of short front vowels.
According to the Wiki page on New Zealand English, the short-i* in kit, which is a short front vowel in Standard American English, becomes a centralized vowel indistinct from the schwa in words like the (unstressed). In comparison, Australians would pronounce kit with an /i/, so it shifts to the higher vowel sound in fleece. So, if you asked a speaker of New Zealand English to say kit, it would sound more or less like cut whereas an Australian speaker would say keet (Trudgill, Gordon, and Lewis). However, the centralization of short front vowels is not the only aspect of the vowel shift in New Zealand English. Other short front vowels are actually raised in this shift. The short front vowels in trap, dress, and kit are shifted clockwise (see Fig. 1) so that trap is raised, dress is raised, and kit is lowered and centralized (New Zealand English, Marije van der Kooij). The vowel in dress has, in fact, continued to raise so that it is intruding on the vowel in fleece, and we now see instances of fleece becoming a diphthong (New Zealand English, wikipedia.org). A good example of the dress vowel shift occurs in a scene in HBO's Flight of the Conchords (see Fig. 2), where the character Bret meets a girl in New York and tries to introduce himself to her. Much to his chagrin, the vowel shifts of his New Zealand dialect cause some confusion. This same shift can also cause a hilarious (or embarrassing) misunderstanding between the words dick and deck, where dick is pronounced more or less like duck and deck is pronounced like dick. So, if you're talking to a Kiwi about scrubbing the deck (of your boat) and they break out in a fit of laughter, you can blame the vowel shift. Another noticeable vowel shift is the trap vowel which is raised to sound more like trep. This results in the pronunciation of laptop as leptop, cat as ket, and so forth. This shift is very similar to South African English, which causes speakers of both dialects to be confused for each other (New Zealand English, wikipedia.org). In addition to the shift in monophthongs, there is yet another vowel shift in the diphthongs of New Zealand English (see Fig. 3). The diphthongs in face, price, and choice shift counterclockwise so the positioning for face is more open (fice), price is further back (proice), and choice sounds more like thought (New Zealand English, Marije van der Kooij). An aspect of New Zealand English that is confusing to those who don't speak it are the vowel mergers. These cause pairs of words to sound indiscernable from each other, such as dole and doll, pull and pool, full and fill, and even the names Allan and Ellen (New Zealand English, wikipedia.org). Kiwi Youtuber thefaceofzak, a.k.a. Zak, does a great job of showing us the merger in his video "New Zealand Lingo and Accent" (see Fig. 4, 1:11-1:46). One of the more commonly studied mergers is referred to as the near/square merger. It's likely the most studied because the vowel sounds in near and square are increasingly becoming more similar throughout generations of speakers, so we can track the change. Due to this merger,"here rhymes with there; and bear and beer, and rarely and really are homophones" (Hay, Drager, and Warren). This could easily cause confusion to a non-speaker of New Zealand English, especially one from America, because in Standard American English those words all have very distinct vowel sounds. ConsonantsAlthough the consonants in New Zealand English are not the easiest way by which to determine if a speaker is Kiwi or not, I will touch on them briefly, for some of them are remniscent of the speech of the nation's first generation of European settlers.
According to the Wiki page for New Zealand English, NZE is mostly a non-rhotic language, except for speakers in certain areas of Southland and Otago. Their speech is semi-rhotic due to a Scottish influence and is referred to as a "Southland burr". However, even amongst those speakers who don't have a Southland burr, a linking and intrustive-r is still present. Additionally, the glottal stop is starting to make itself prevalent in New Zealand English. Janet Holmes analyzed this trend in her article "Glottal stops in New Zealand English: an analysis of variants of word-final /t/", published in the journal Linguistics. The glottal stop, both word-final and intervocalic, is essential to the Cockney dialect of British English as well as Scottish English. Holmes describes how this phenomenon has begun to spread to New Zealand, and mentions that although intervocalic glottal stops, such as pronouncing butter as buh'a, are infrequent, the use of word-final glottal stops are "less stigmatized". She also mentions that glottal stops were much more common in teenage girls than in any other demographic, suggesting a generational/gender-based dialect change. listenNow that we've covered the basics of New Zealand English phonology, the best way to truly understand it all is to listen to native speakers. Since people tend to pronounce things differently when talking about their dialect to someone unfamiliar with it, I'm using videos of Kiwis in conversational speech as examples. The first is an interview with Rhys Darby, the New Zealand comedian who plays the character Murray in Flight of the Conchords (see Fig. 5). The second is a clip from Flight of the Conchords where Jemaine finds out he went home with an Australian woman (Keitha) after a night out, much to his and Bret's horror. Listen closely to the differences in vowel sounds between Jemaine and Keitha. For an additional comparison, I've included a video of the late, beloved wildlife enthusiast Steve Irwin, better known as the Crocodile Hunter (see Fig. 7). After listening to the New Zealand dialect in all of the previous videos, you should be able to hear the distinctly different vowel shift in Irwin's speech.
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*Note: IPA symbols did not translate to this webpage