<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:48 recently i spent some time in britain on sabbatical leave from the university of canterbury <,> ten years before on an earlier leave i found that other university academics <&>1:00 in britain weren't really very interested in MY own research interest which is the study of new zealand english <,> oh they were very polite about it but it was clear to me that this wasn't an area that people were concerned about last year i found that things had really changed i found universities where courses on varieties of english were being taught and where new zealand english was considered an important and interesting variety in fact i could have cheerfully occupied my time going about giving lectures on this particular topic as british lecturers were looking for more material on new zealand english and to have a native speaker of the variety was considered a bonus <,> this wider interest in new zealand english coincides with the development of the subject of sociolinguistics and its concern with language variation it also coincides with a developing interest in other areas of english study <,> <&>2:00 poetry and fiction drama and so on written IN english but outside england in australia in canada in the west indies in africa and in new zealand for example <,,> it seems to me that we've come a long way from the time in this century when new zealand english was seen by many within new zealand as a corruption and a perversion of pure british english something to be stamped out wherever possible <,> today new zealand english is recognised as an established variety of english the study of new zealand english is a topic in the english classes in our schools and by all accounts it's a popular one <,> this year at the university of canterbury we will be offering an honours paper in the english department on the study of new zealand english and this will eventually become a course in the undergraduate programme one of the questions we frequently get asked about new zealand english is where did it come from and <&>3:00 when was it first noticed <,> it's MUCH easier to find early evidence of vocabulary which people thought was distinctive to new zealand than it is to find good evidence about new zealand pronunciation people wrote about new zealand words as quaint or interesting curiosities <,> one such writer was samuel butler later to be famous as the author of and the novel <,> he came to canterbury as a young man in eighteen fifty nine and he wrote a book called <,> butler had a keen ear for language and was anxious to fit into colonial life as quickly as possible <&>3:41 <&>nineteen second insert not transcribed <&>4:00 butler quickly picked up new terms being used in new zealand he noticed that people in new zealand referred to a flax bush where in england they would have said a flax plant and he noticed various slang terms in use <&>4:14 <&>eight second insert not transcribed <&>4:22 he also found the expression to go eyes out meaning to go as fast or as energetically as possible now this is an expression that i still use i've been going eyes out all morning getting the house tidy before the visitors come however my own children laugh at it and they say they'd never use it of the students i teach only the odd one has heard it from a grandparent butler also commented on the large number of expressions relating to sheep farming and station life coming from australia together with other expressions a good example of an <&>5:00 australian borrowing can be seen in his description of the use of the word cooee which is said to have come from an aboriginal word meaning to come <&>5:08 <&>two minute fifteen second insert not transcribed <&>7:23 this is another example of an early new zealand slang expression which seems to be going out of fashion i can remember as a child being called with a cooee but again my students claim they'd never use it and some claim never to have even heard of it on the other hand i recently saw an advertisement in the christchurch press for a house which was described as being within cooee of schools and the university so the expression isn't dead yet <,,> in many ways it isn't so difficult to track the development of the new zealand vocabulary newcomers to new zealand in <&>8:00 the early days would comment on terms that were unusual or different which they saw as interesting carriers of local colour <,> but the early manifestations of the new zealand accent weren't so well received it was seen as something horrible and degenerate which must be stamped out references to lazy and slovenly speech abound in early accounts of the new zealand accent but the interesting thing is that it wasn't like this in the very beginning the first comments about new zealand speech were entirely complimentary the best known of these came from an englishman called samuel mcburney who travelled around australia and new zealand promoting the tonic solfa singing method mister mcburney's hobby was phonetics and he had taught himself to use a phonetic script called glossic wherever he went he wrote down pronunciations he found especially interesting and he made a note of general <&>9:00 trends he visited christchurch in october eighteen eighty seven and his comments on new zealand speech were reported in the lyttelton times <&>9:06 <&>thirty nine second insert not transcribed <&>9:45 three days later a leader appeared in the press congratulating its readers on the purity of their accents <&>9:51 <&>one minute one second insert not transcribed <&>10:52 but by the turn of the century the tone of the comments about new zealand speech had certainly <&>11:00 changed a useful source of information comes from the school inspectors' reports where they commented on the pronunciation of the children whose reading and reciting they were examining from them we find references to impure vowels to faulty diphthongs and to this objectionable colonial dialect in nineteen hundred and twelve mister augustus heine the acting headmaster of wellington college was asked about the speech of his pupils he replied that it was getting worse and that he had noticed it especially in the last ten years and when he was asked to support his assertion he answered <&>11:38 <&>twenty three second insert not transcribed <&>12:01 comments such as mister heine's continued to be heard in nineteen twenty four we find f martin renner addressing the new zealand educational association <&>12:11 <&>fifteen second insert not transcribed <&>12:26 perhaps these critics will never go away this statement was made in nineteen eighty three in a letter to the listener <&>12:32 <&>nine second insert not transcribed <&>12:41 so to answer that frequently asked question about where did the new zealand accent come from <,> the explanation given most frequently in the past is that it's a version of the cockney dialect spoken in parts of london <,> professor arnold wall a former professor of english at <&>13:00 canterbury university college was generally recognised as new zealand's english language expert i can remember as a school girl in the nineteen fifties being advised to listen to the radio to professor wall's weekly talks on language arnold wall was absolutely convinced about the cockney origins of new zealand speech or enzedic as he liked to call it and he talks about this in a radio broadcast he made in nineteen fifty three called <&>13:29 <&>fifty two second insert not transcribed <&>14:21 this explanation has been put forward by others as well however if we listen to cockney speech and we can hear it on television programmes such as the or it's clear that it doesn't really sound like new zealand speech at all there are a GREAT many differences between the two varieties also if new zealand english were to have been a form of cockney english this would suggest that there must have been a large number of cockney speaking people emigrating to new zealand and the facts just don't support this at all professor wall had a notion that most of the early school teachers spoke with a <&>15:00 cockney accent but this also isn't supported by demography <,,> a different theory about the origins of new zealand speech is sometimes called the mixing bowl theory this suggests that when people move from the country into a large city such as london a kind of mixture of their accents takes place resulting in a new variety we know for example that the whole of southeastern english has h dropping it is h less <,> but australian and new zealand english is h pronouncing we don't say at we say hat we do know however that in the early days the dropping of h among new zealand children was a constant complaint of the school inspectors time after time they grumble about the loss of the aspirate or the fact that the initial h is cruelly neglected <,> did the school teachers <&>16:00 manage to change the speaking habits of these new zealand children to such an extent that now everyone pronounces those hs or is it perhaps the influence of the large number of irish and scottish immigrants who DO pronounce their hs that brought about this change this is still speculation but it could suggest evidence of dialect mixing in new zealand we do know for certain that in the early settlements in new zealand it was possible to hear a wide variety of different accents and dialects arnold wall makes this point himself <&>16:35 <&>one minute seven second insert not transcribed <&>17:42 our evidence of early reports of the new zealand accent come from written material just as they still do today people THEN wrote letters to the paper and articles for magazines and journals about the speech of new zealanders <&>18:00 and they usually wrote to express their outrage in varying degrees <,> never realising i'm sure that their examples of what they liked to call degenerate speech would provide later researchers with valuable evidence for the study of the origins and development of the new zealand accent but there are problems with using the written records alone the same examples appear over and over again in particular the new zealand pronunciation of the four closing diphthongs <&>says PRICE diphthong <&>says FACE diphthong <&>says GOAT diphthong and <&>says MOUTH diphthong i say go now did they mention these sounds because they were the most prominent or was it because they could express the pronunciations they heard in a spelling version so there's the complaint about <&>says PRICE diphthong being pronounced as <&>says PRICE diphthong pronounced as <&>in broad New Zealand English accent so they'll say that a word like fine is pronounced fine <&>in broad New Zealand English accent which they will spell f o i n e and they will write the new <&>19:00 zealand pronunciation of house as house <&>in broad New Zealand English accent h e o u s e <,,> but what about other features of new zealand speech which are much harder to convey in spelling i think <&>says NURSE vowel is a good example in new zealand this is pronounced with the lips much more tightly rounded than in received british pronunciation compare the early bird catches the worm r p with the early bird catches the worm new zealand <,> but it's difficult to describe this in spelling so because the writers didn't comment on this particular sound does this mean that it wasn't there or that it was there but they just didn't notice it or does it mean that it was there but it was too difficult to convey in ordinary spelling what is needed are some recordings of the speech of those early new zealanders in the last century and for obvious reasons <&>20:00 we don't have these however we do have samples of the speech of people who were born in new zealand in the nineteenth century in the nineteen forties the national broadcasting service of new zealand set up a special unit called the mobile disc recording unit which took to the road in nineteen forty six the equipment consisted of a large van formerly one of the mobile control towers belonging to the airforce and no longer needed after the war inside this van were two large and cumbersome disc recorders which cut sixteen inch vulcanite discs the van travelled through the west coast of the north island through the waikato the thames valley and the base of the coromandel it also did a tour of otago to coincide with the provincial centennial there the purpose of this mobile unit was to record pioneer reminiscences some were from first settlers but more from the children of the first settlers the archive <&>21:00 includes a considerable amount of maori material and also musical items from local bands and choirs soloists and orchestras but the recording of the music was never as good as that of the spoken word <,> here we have a wonderful resource for the study of the early new zealand accent some of the speakers were born in new zealand in the eighteen sixties and in the eighteen seventies the study of the speech of those recorded in this archive has now begun at the university of canterbury and that will be going on for some time but a strong initial impression <.>is is of the amount of variation among those new zealand born speakers listen to a couple of the speakers <&>21:43 <&>one minute thirty two second insert not transcribed <&>23:15 it seems to me most unlikely that anyone overseas listening to this recording would ever guess that this speaker was a new zealander yet she WAS born in new zealand in the eighteen sixties <,,> this speaker sounds quite different <&>23:29 <&>fifty five second insert not transcribed <&>24:24 of course the status of these recordings can be questioned as evidence for the origins and development of the new zealand accent can we really take elderly speakers in the nineteen forties as being representative of the speech in new zealand of the eighteen seventies maybe these people's speech has changed over the years that's always a possibility my response to this is to say that we have this material available and we must make of it what we can when i asked the british sociolinguist peter trudgill about this problem he said that he thought it would be unlikely that a person's <&>25:00 core pronunciation would change to any great extent over the years and he thought we could take these recordings as being representative of the speech in new zealand in the last century so perhaps when those elderly speakers in the nineteen forties were talking into what must have been for them a very new and strange recording device they were unwittingly also giving us some valuable clues about the origins and development of new zealand speech <&>25:28