Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LESSON 9 - TEXT I - Studying New Zealand English
LESSON 9 - TEXT I - Studying New Zealand English
Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/english-language-in-new-zealand/page-2
Despite New Zealand’s geographical distance from Europe, and the considerable
differences between Britain and a small South Pacific island nation with a rugged
landscape, volcanic peaks and indigenous population, New Zealand and its citizens were
expected to develop a variety of English not dissimilar to that of its northern ‘motherland’.
In fact, little notice was taken of New Zealand English, and systematic research and
scholarship into this language variety developed only late in the 20th century.
In the early 1890s James Murray, editor of the New English dictionary, precursor to the
Oxford English dictionary, solicited words and usages peculiar to Australia and New
Zealand.
Edward Ellis Morris of the University of Melbourne took up the challenge and sought
New Zealand terms and evidence of their usage in written citations. Advertising widely
in New Zealand newspapers for assistance, he gathered sufficient terms to publish an
independent dictionary. In 1898 his comprehensive publication Austral English: a
dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages went almost unheralded in New
Zealand, while it was greeted with considerable criticism in Australia.
Later scholarship
It was not until 1943 that the distinctiveness of New Zealand English was described, when
Jack Bennett, a New Zealander at Oxford University in England, wrote about ‘English as
it is spoken in New Zealand’ in the journal American Speech.
Bennett claimed that New Zealand English of the time was rich in slang, and strongly
influenced by terms from rural life. He argued that local usages of bach, morning tea,
shower (a food cover), smoke-oh (or smoko, a tea break for workers), lollies, blackballs
(sweets) and service cars (vehicles for hire) were distinctive to New Zealand in the 1940s.
To Bennett, there was sufficient evidence to demonstrate that New Zealand and Australia
had individual forms of English.