Love your accent

Listening to: The Fragile-Nine Inch Nails

Lauren, our Canadian soon to be housemate sent us a list of kiwi slang (linky) for verification. It is surprisingly accurate. I say surprisingly, because most lists I have seen of this kind tend to be completely archaic. That said, I have never heard or used 'Boohai' in a conversation, nor have I encountered 'Tata' lately in any context other than humorous. I have been to Eketahuna though.

Laurens comments about accents here got me to thinking. Is it possible to write in an accent? I'm not talking Irvine Welsh/Trainspotting phonetic dialectical style here, but a more subtle thing in terms of phraseology or dialect that imparts a regional characteristic.

As evidenced here I apparently handwrite like a boy. I am curious if there is anything in the way I type or express that marks me as a New Zealander.

Which brings us in a roundabout way to vocal accents. I love accents, I love hearing them and then trying to decipher where exactly they are from. I like my own accent, even though it does tend to mangle softer consonants like 'l's.

It was amusing to read Lauren describing my accent as 'heavy'. I would consider it mid range personally as kiwi accents go, but then I seldom get to hear myself speak, and cringe when I do, so I am not sure I have any basis for comparison. I can have two accents depending on the company. I use my normal accent (which I think of as the lazy one) for general conversation and such, and reserve a slightly more focussed, clear, clipped and 'proper' accent for more formal occasions like talking to a room full of people or job interviews.

Laurens canadian accent is interesting. It is a fairly neutral (to my ears) classic northern american accent, but with clear british and french influences, which perhaps you'd expect in Canada. It is odd to my ears to hear a north american voice use 'mum' instead of 'mom'. The use of 'no' at the end of a question (e.g. you were going out, no?) sounds french, Rich (whose mother is french and is a fluent french speaker himself) and I decided.

The New Zealand (and its sibling, the Australian) accents are apparently a mix of various UK accents. I'm not a linguist, but this seems borne out to me by listening to those UK accents. At times a word will be said in exactly the same way as a New Zealander would. In the same way, at times UK words will be pronounced the same way a north american would.

I'm not sure either New Zealand or Australia have been english speaking long enough to develop strong regional accents. The only readily identifiable NZ english sub accent is from the southern South Island, which was largely settled by Scots, hence resulting in a pronounced rolled R (e.g I went to worrrk on the farrrm). By the same token, you could expect Dannevirke in the norhern Wairarapa to have a scandinavian influenced accent, although I have never met anyone from Dannevirke so don't know if this holds true. I have no idea if there are regional Maori accents. I think there may be some dialects though.

Another aspect of accents that is interesting to me is how some people can hold on to theirs indefinitely, while others lose them. I think my own accent is extremely malleable. After spending six days in Los Angeles as a teenager I noted myself starting to use californian phrases and inflections. My father is from Durham in Northen England, and the accent he grew up with is almost unintelligible on first encountering it, being not only very strong, but littered with the sort of dialect that can vary from town to town in the UK. That said, having lived in New Zealand since 1963, his accent has almost disappeared. Fi disagrees, saying he has a very strong accent, but all I can pick up is some elongation of certain vowels.

Maybe I should have been a linguist. I appear to have a gift for it.

Another aspect of talking to Lauren got me wondering about the etymolgy of certain phrases. The phrase "Getting along like a house on fire" entered my head more than once. Now the intended meaning is obvious, you get on well and enjoy the interaction, but the literal meaning? How does a burning house relate to a conversation?

"They got done like a dogs dinner" also causes confusion, as does 'Pack a sad'. Again, the intended meaning is obvious (if you've grown up with them, sorry Lauren!), but I'm not sure how they got to where they are as common phrases.

This has almost nothing to do with the above, but I'm closing with it as it is a nice piece of demonstrating flexible meanings. Its a quote from an irish soldier in a book I read once referring to a piece of equipment that was not working as intended:

"F*ck! The f*cking f*ckers f*cking f*cked!"