The Kiwi Accent

I love the Kiwi accent. I'm still not 100% sure I can accurately differentiate between the Kiwi and the Aussie accent, and I know admitting to as much is like saying I can't tell the difference between a Canadian and an American, but I am loving the process of getting my head around it.

First of all, Kiwis have a strange case of vowel slippage. What this means is vowels that we know and love as Americans sound quite different here - and confusingly, they are usually swapped with other vowel sounds. The most common example is Fish and Chips becoming something like more like Fush and Chups. But its much more entertaining than just that.

The 'e' sound like in 'men' becomes an 'i' sound like in 'itch'. So for example, Chris and I were listening to a local radio station that as far as I am concerned is called the 'Idge', but is in fact called the 'Edge'.

The 'er' on the end of words also disappears somewhat and becomes more like an 'ah' as in British English. So an American glass of water, becomes a glass of wohtah - but not in a Boston/New York way.

This becomes confusing when whole sentences as strung together - so for example, if a man has a tennis lesson at ten after six in the morning; in New Zealand is sounds more like a min has a tinnus lisson at tin aftah sux in the mohrnin. That's a terrible approximation, but you get the idea.

Lots has been written about it apparently - a quick google search turned up this, but these idiosyncrasies  have definitely led to some moments when Chris and I have had to take a time out and have a recap of a conversation to make sure we're grasping everything correctly - especially over the phone. By no means is it as confusing as learning a new language, but by its very similarities lie the biggest pit falls.

Some of my favorite and most dangerous vowel swap outs are as follows:
- Pen to Pin as in "Can I borrow your pin?" = hunh?
- Men to Min
- Sex to Six
- Six to Sux
- Deck to Dick - probably best if I don't give examples of the above...
- Tennis to Tinnus
- Winter to Wuntah

And many more... There are also some wonderful examples of Kiwi slang words that we have come across too, but those are for another post... :-)

EDIT: My brother just shared this awesome youtube video about New Zealand Deck Sealant. Slightly politically incorrect and definitely NSFW...

In the mean time, here is a random beach Chris and I found about an hour from Wellington. As Chris said, its not very crowded...: