Unstent NZ eccint

All Australians know how funny (both senses of the word) the New Zealand accent is, and how difficult it is to imitate. Fortunately, help is at hand. After extensive research in the field, consisting primarily of a close viewing of the brilliant TV show Flight of the Conchords, I have developed an easy-to-follow two step pathway to an instant NZ accent. Here it is:

1. Pronounce all consonants, all hard vowels, and the soft vowel ‘o’ (as in ‘pot’) as you would in your usual Australian accent.
2. Shift each remaining soft vowel (‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’ and ‘u’) one place down the alphabet.

So that means you pronounce:

• ‘a’ as ‘e’ (so, for example, ‘hat’ becomes ‘het’)
• ‘e’ as ‘i’ (so ‘leg’ becomes ‘lig’)
• ‘i’ as ‘u’ (so ‘chips’ becomes ‘chups’)
• ‘u’ as ‘a’ (so ‘mug’ becomes ‘mag’)*

Now thet your NZ eccint us pufictid, hev fan umprissung your mates and pussung off the Noo Zilender chuck thet serves you et IGA wuth how crep your ummutation rilly us.

*This last rule isn’t quite true. Really ‘u’ should be pronounced as the indefinite vowel (like the sound at the end of ‘doctor’). Actually, none of these rule are really correct: New Zealanders use a crazy range of vowels that are unknown to the English language in any other corner of Her Majesty’s current and former realms. But the rules are close enough that once you start using them, you should be able to hear the NZ coming through, and adjust the sounds as you git bitter.

Photo by inconstanti