The Indefinable New Zealand Accent
Good luck trying to mimic us
If there’s one guarantee about being a New Zealander, it’s that when you go overseas, no one can guess where you’re from.
Accents are strange things. I’ve always been fascinated by them; it seems like every country has its own unique accent, but when you dig deeper you realize that even that accent changes from place to place, class to class, and background to background.
Because of my interest in this, whenever anyone talks, I’m always listening to how they pronounce certain words — which is how I know that my own native New Zealand accent is nigh on impossible to identify and replicate.
I’ve travelled many times in my life, and never has anyone managed to guess my nationality. I’ve been mistaken for Australian, South African, and British — a fair assumption, given that the New Zealand accent is essentially just those three accents stacked on top of one another, wearing a trench coat. (I would also like to point out for those that don’t know: New Zealand and Australia are not the same country. Not even a little bit.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; on the contrary, I find it rather amusing when people try and guess where I’m from. The funniest thing is that I myself sometimes can’t identify my own accent.
