New zealand english

New Zealand EnglishMade by Alla Sidorenko, 11-B

New Zealand English (NZE, en-NZ) is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.

The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker varieties of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and become distinctive only in the last 150 years". The most distinctive influences on New Zealand English have come from Australian English, English in southern England, Irish English, Scottish English and Māori. New Zealand English is similar to Australian English in pronunciation, with some key differences.

A distinct New Zealand variant of the English language has been in existence since at least 1912, when Frank Arthur Swinnerton described it as a "carefully modulated murmur," though its history probably goes back further than that.

From the beginning of the British settlement on the islands, a new dialect began to form by adopting Māori words to describe the different flora and fauna of New Zealand, for which English did not have any words of its own.

The vowels of New Zealand English are similar to that of other non-rhotic dialects such as Australian English, but with some distinct variations, which are indicated by the transcriptions for New Zealand vowels in the tables below:

There are a number of dialectal words and phrases used in New Zealand English. These are mostly informal terms that are more common in casual speech.

New Zealand adopted decimal currency in the 1960s and the metric system in the 1970s. Despite this, several imperial measures are still widely understood and encountered, such as feet and inches for a person's height, pounds and ounces for an infant's birth weight, and in colloquial terms such as referring to drinks in pints. The word "spud" for potato, now common throughout the English-speaking world, originated in New Zealand English.

Many local everyday words have been borrowed from the Māori language, including words for local flora, fauna, place names and the natural environment.

The dominant influence of Māori on New Zealand English is lexical. A 1999 estimate based on the Wellington corpora of written and spoken New Zealand English put the proportion of words of Māori origin at approximately 0.6%, mostly place and personal names.

The everyday use of Maori words, usually colloquial, occurs most prominently among youth, young adults and Maori populations. Examples include words like "kia ora" ("hello"), or "kai" ("food") which almost all New Zealanders know.