English is English... Except if It's English

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Looking back over this thread, and expanding on what HB sorta said (I think), here we do use a mixture between english and american english, with some of our own words thrown in there just to liven things up.

Traditionally, New Zealand spoke english english. Infact, two centuries ago when the colonists first came here, the government, worried about the children picking up different accents and words from the Maori, sent for a load of English teachers from London to teach the children 'proper' english, in order that they don't loose their accent. That obviously didn't work

More and more resently - espcially amoung the younger people, and those who spend far too much time infront of TV/computers - people have been using more and more American terms. Hearing Deathmage talking about Cookies always annoys me. It's biscuits!

Words like Football here always causes a bit of confusion. Gridion is more often used to describe American Football, but then Soccer is commonly used as well. I guess to most people football refers to Soccer - once again, our british origins.

Mixed in with that confusion of languages we also have a few Maori words dotted here and there. Can't think of any off the top of my head (probably because I'm so use to using them that they seem normal), but I'm sure with a bit of thinking it would be easy to come up with a long list of words that, other than HB and other kiwis, none of you would understand

One thing that I've noticed a lot the last few years, when on the internet, is the use of the word full stop vs period. Here that little dot that goes at the end of the sentence is called a full stop, but when I say full stop when speaking with a forgien audience, no one has a clue what I'm speaking about. Don't know if that's a kiwi thing, or a more widely used word.

Just a quick glance over the lists of words so far in this thread, we generally use:
Petrol.
Soccer.
Sausages.
BBQ.
Boot.
Bonnet.
Rubber.
Chips (instead of fries)
Both Cellphone and Mobile, although more and more resently cellphone seems to be taking over.
Clothing is another that is drifting more and more American, although I still use the English versions.
Herb.
biscuit.
Nappy.
Footpath.
Pram.
Aluminium.
Chips (refering to crisps as well).
Margarine.
Rubbish bin.
Ladder.

 

Yes!!

Like whanau, iwi, mana, kai etc?

 

Yup There we go! Thanks.

 

How about:
hospital pass
kicking for touch
game of two halves
swanndri
it's all about whanau

 

English is my second language, I probably have words "carried over" from American english. Like cookie. I watched Sesame Street as a kid...

 

In America, its cookie. Too bad for everyone else. I ask you not to get angry at the way we speak: it is a dialect, just as Argentinian Spanish (or Mexican, or whatever) is different from Spain Spanish, even though they are the same language. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.

And they're cookies

 

But it leads to weird misunderstandings, like the horrible sounding (to us) dish "Biscuits and Gravy".

 

Well, it is horrible.

 

Dialects aren't so bad as mixing dialects or creating impenetrable jargons. The latter aren't actually so bad if people use them in their own company, even if it sounds weird. But I don't like when someone pulls ghetto talk on me. I'll try my best if it seems to be the only way the person can communicate but if it's just a fancy manner of speech, my patience is short. Peculiarities are okay, but I'm not going to put up with confusing fads. No rhyming slangs or anything.

 

I'd hardly call cockney rhyming slang a "fad". Mixing up the language for comic effect is fairly common place and it often has a fairly easy set of rules to follow. Betty Swalls for example.