New Zilunders and proud of it

Jim Mora and Judy Bailey put our pronunciation to the test.

We will probably never like hearing a snarky Aussie utter "fush'n'chups" but at least we're getting over the cultural cringe. That's one of the findings of New Zild - The Story of New Zealand English, (TV One, 8.30pm), a documentary that takes a lighthearted look at the way we speak.

"People used to think that if you spoke with a British accent, or something sounding like one, you were a more successful person," says host Jim Mora. "Now we're asserting our identity. We're prouder of the way we sound."

Mora and director John Milligan, a documentary-maker with a passion for linguistics, talked to experts and iconic Kiwis throughout the country, including Ginette "vushual sumphuny" McDonald, Pio Terei and Mike King. They also studied footage of McDonald's Lynn of Tawa and Fred Dagg and Billy T James, and played snippets of various dialects to high-school students, who surprised them by choosing Kiwi accents as the most appealing.

Since the 19th-century goldfield days, when the children of Australian and European settlers merged accents in school playgrounds, we've become friendlier and "more common" in our speech, says Mora, as we established an identity removed from Mother England.

Our vowel sounds have merged, meaning there is less definition between words such as "here", "hair" and "hear" as there once might have been. And despite the long-held theory that accents develop in isolation, our increased exposure to global media hasn't much altered our speech, other than some Americanisms creeping in.

0"From my own experience, 20 years ago people were a bit self-conscious of the rolling 'r' in Southland," Mora says. "Now people are proud of it. They want to retain it. The kids want to sound like Southlanders. And there seems to be a Taranaki element developing, and an Auckland, or a South Auckland, accent developing. We seem to be using language as part of our turangawaewae, as part of our way of saying, 'This is where I'm from'. We're proud of our New Zealand accent in a way we never used to be."

If you want to know how far we've come, Judy Bailey will be reading the news in the accents of 1905 and 2105. Or you could just go shopping, suggests Mora. "Listen to the young women at supermarket checkouts, because it's young women who tend to be the shapers of the language.

"We're going to sound broader, slightly drawlier, more like people like Trevor Mallard, Lianne Dalziel, Bill English. That's the way the New Zealand voice is moving. At the moment they're quite distinctive voices but in 50 years time they won't be."