Accent on New Zealand and Australia

New Zealanders don't like it when foreigners tell them their accents are just the same as Australians'. And once you've been here for a while, you'll realise they aren't. Pick up some light-hearted tips about the accents of New Zealand English.

---

New Zealanders like to think of their country as classless - a country where everyone has the same accent. They will admit that the Southland accent is a bit different, owing to the large numbers of Scots who settled there. Southlanders tend to roll the "r" sound in their speech. Of course, many Maori also speak English with a distinct accent - and the difference between their more staccato way of speaking and other New Zealanders is quickly heard. There are other differences, but before we look at these, I'd like to answer the question: 'Why do New Zealanders and Australians sound so similar when they are separated by a sea that takes three hours to fly over?'

The answer, although not widely advertised in New Zealand, is straightforward. The first English-speaking settlers of New Zealand were Australian seal-hunters from the penal colony of Port Jackson (Sydney). Later settlers were mainly British. The New Zealand accent grew from an Australian foundation spiced with inputs from the different regional accents of the British Isles - English, Scots, Welsh and Irish.

So, what are the sounds in their speech that make New Zealanders sound like New Zealanders?

The first sound that comes to my mind is one I noticed a few days after arriving in New Zealand. I was standing in a queue at the bank listening to the young woman behind me. I wasn't eavesdropping you understand - I just couldn't avoid hearing what she was saying. She was talking to her friend about the "cheek" she was getting. I soon realised that she was neither talking about a part of her anatomy nor about someone's sarcasm towards her. She was talking about the cheque (U.S. check) she was there to collect. There is a tendency in New Zealand English to shorten the long 'e' sound found in beg, said and leg, into a short 'ee' sound of the type found in seek, leak or peak. So when a New Zealander tells you to do something 'ageen', you know they want you do it 'again'.

It's worthwhile pointing out that this tendency to shorten the 'e' sound varies widely between speakers - and, to my ears, is heard more often in the South Island than the North Island - but this might just be my impression.

To illustrate the second difference, I'd like you to cast your mind back to an old favourite from children's 'learn to write' books, the infamous "The cat sat on the mat". The pronunciation of this sentence might seem straightforward enough to you - lots of "ah" sounds of the type a doctor might ask you to make during an examination. To a New Zealander, however, the doctor is entirely absent from consideration. In fact, a New Zealander will say, "The cet set on the met". If you haven't noticed this before, listen out the next time you hear a New Zealander speaking and you'll hear it.

Moving on again, the next two sounds that come to mind are found in both New Zealand and Australian English. The sounds are best illustrated by a joke. The scene is North Africa, at the height of fierce battles in World War 2. An Australian junior officer meets a British senior officer on the front line. "Good morning young man," says the British officer, "Did you come here to die?"

"No Sir," replies the young Australian, "I came yesterday".

To British ears, our heroic young Australian would sound like he said "Oi kime yester-die". The butt of the joke here is how, to British ears, Australians (and New Zealanders) pronounce "day" as "die" and "lay" as "lie," etc so that "today" becomes "to die". Of course, British people with a Cockney accent also come close to pronouncing "day" as "die" and the Cockney influence is certainly the source of the sound in Australian and hence New Zealand English. The way in which 'i' becomes 'oi' is very much more an Australian pronunciation than a New Zealand one. Some New Zealanders can sound very Australian in this regard - for example Helen Clark, the current Prime Minister of New Zealand. I'm not quite sure why New Zealanders vary so much in this - it doesn't seem to be a regional variation.

Finally, the true clincher to decide whether you are listening to an Australian or New Zealander lies in the pronunciation of the letter "i" in the famous fish and chips test.

If your companion likes eating "feesh and cheeps," he or she is Australian.

If, on the other hand, they prefer "fush and chups," you are undoubtedly dealing with a New Zealander.

Have fun.

آیا میدانستید که؟

Did you know that …
“I am.” is repeatedly the shortest sentence in English

آیا میدانستید که...؟
کوتاه ترین جمله عام زبان انگلیسی I am است.

---

Did you know that?
The shortest poem in the world is written in English by Strickland Gillian and goes as follows:

The antiquity of microbes

Adam

Had’em

آیا میدانستید که...؟
کوتاه ترین شعر در جهان به زبان انگلیسی و توسط استریکلند گیلیان نوشته شده که در زیر آورده شده:

تاریخچه میکروب ها

حضرت آدم

آنها را داشت

---

Did you know that?
The names of all continents end with the same letter that they start with.

آیا میدانستید که...؟
حرف اول و آخر نام تمامی قاره ها در زبان انگلیسی یکسان است.

---

Did you know that ...
There are only four word in English that end in “-dous”:
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous

آیا می دانسته اید که ...
تنها چهار کلمه در زبان انگلیسی وجود دارند که به پسوند dous ختم میشوندو عبارتند از:

tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, hazardous

---

Did you know that?
The dot over the letter “i” is called a title

آیا میدانستید که...؟
نقطه بالای حرف i یک سرکش محسوب میشود.

Happy Valentine's Day

 

- وقتی بدانم که یک لحظه به یادم هستی، تمام عمرم را فدای آن لحظه
میکنم.

If I know that I am your mind just a moment, I will immolate my all life to that moment!

- در ساحل سرخ دلت اسم کسی را حک نکن، به اینکه من دوستت دارم حتی یه ذره شک نکن

Don't carve ones name in your heart beach, don't be in doubt about my love.

- تبسم خرجی ندارد ولی سود بسیاری دارد.

A smile has no price but has so profit.

- زندگی درک همین امروز است. ظرف دیروز پر از بودن توست. شاید این خنده که امروز دریغم کردی، آخرین فرصت همراهی ماست.

Life is to understand today; yesterday was full of you, May this smile that you withhold it today was our last fortune to be together.

- تک درخت خاطراتم بر لب ساحل نشسته، گر چه دوری از کنارم یاد تو در دل نشسته.

My lone tree of my memories is in the beach, you are away but your memory is in the heart.

تفاوت لهجه کانادایی و آمریکایی - Canadian Vs American

Canada America

An American will say, "Hot day!" A Canadian will say, "Hot day, eh?" meaning "It's a hot day, isn't it?"

This is something deeper than spelling or pronunciation. It goes to the heart of the less-assertive Canadian character. The United States was born when Americans revolted against King George III and asserted their independence. Canada never came to a similar point of self-assertion and that little word "eh?" is their refusal even to assert that it's a hot day without inviting somebody else to verify it.

One definition of a Candian is "a North American who refuses to join the revolution".

Another way to tell the difference between a Canadian and an American is to invite the suspected Canuck to lunch and watch him eat. If he's really upper crust, he'll eat like an Englishman, with knife and fork held firmly in his right and left hands. He'll cut with his knife, pack the results on the back of his fork and convey the food to his mouth with the fork still in this left hand.

Many an American eats with knife and fork, too, but in a different way. He takes the knife in his right hand and the fork in his left to cut up the food. Then he puts the knife down and takes the fork in the right hand to convey the food to his mouth.

A common garden-variety Canadian does the job differently. He doesn't use his knife at all, except for particularly stubborn steaks and other such tough foods. Instead he takes the fork in his right hand and leaves the knife beside his plate. Then he cuts the food with the edge of the fork and feeds himself with the fork held in the same hand.

But suppose all these tests are inconclusive. There's one more, rather dangerous, way to tell a Canadian from an American. Just remark to the suspect that Canadians and Americans are so much alike that it's hard to tell one from the other. If the person involved is an American, he'll probably agree.

But if he's a Canadian he'll let you know, in no unterms, that you're wrong. And that stubborn sense of difference is one main reason why the two countries, despite similarities, remain separate.

(I'm pretty sure I agree with the last statement, but I'm not too sure if I like being called a wimp that doesn't even dare to assert that it's a hot day. (Which it is today.) And I'm tremendously relieved to know that I'm upper crust when it comes to eating.

تفاوت لهجه کانادایی و آمریکایی - Canadian Vs American

How do you tell a Canadian from an American?

It used to be enough to ask him to say the alphabet. When the Canadian got to the end, he'd say "zed" instead of "zee". But 18 years of Sesame Street have taught a lot of Canadian kids to say "zee," and it's starting to sound as natural as it does south of the 49th parallel.

Another test used to be the word "lieutenant". Canadians pronounced it in the British was, "leftenant", while Americans say "lootenant". But American cop shows and army shows and movies have eroded that difference, too.

Canadians have been adopting American spelling as well. They used to put a "u" in words like labour. The main organization in the country, the equivalent of the AFL-CIO, is still officially called the Canadian Labour Congress. But news organizations have been wiping out that distinction by adopting American spelling, mostly to make it easier to use news copy from such agencies as Associated Press without a lot of changes. So it's "Canadian Labor Congress" when the Canadian Press, the national news agency, writes about it.

Some pronunciations, considered true tests of Canadians, are not as reliable as they're thought. Take the word "house" for example. When some Canadians say it, it sounds very Scottish in American ears. Visiting Americans trying to reproduce what they hear usually give the Canadian pronunciation as "hoose".

The same for "out" and "about". The way some Canadians say them sounds like "oot" and "aboot" to many Americans. And when an American says "house" to a Canadian, the Canadian often hears a bit of an "ay" in it, something like "hayouse".

But pronunctiaiton isn't a good test because people from different parts of Canada speak differently. A resident of the Western province of Alberta, where there has been a considerable inflow of settlers from the United States, may sound like a Montanan or a Dakotan.

Then there's the ubiquitous Canadian expression "eh?" - pronounced "ay?" This is a better test because many Canadians tack it on to the end of every assertion to turn it into a question.