Vowels, Mental Accents, and Generalizations

Vowels

J and I are not having too much trouble understanding Kiwi accents, but we have noticed (with some help from J’s Australian colleague) that it is the vowels that pose the most problems for us. In many words, they say the vowel as we would say an entirely different vowel, some are surprisingly the same, and occasionally I find one that is a sound I’ve never heard before.

Here are some examples:

“sex” sounds like “six,” while “six” sounds like “sux” (I don’t know how they would say “sucks,” but I’ll listen for it)

“late” sounds like “light,” but “light” sounds the same (ish)

“pause” sounds like a vowel sound that I can barely understand, let alone type

“Emma” sounds like “Eeemma” (which is quite a pitty, but I’ll get used to it)

“glass” sounds like “gloss”

Almost always, the context is plenty clear enough for us to be confident of what people are saying, but occasionally we find ourselves a bit lost. We’ll get the hang of it, though.

Mental Accents

My favourite part of this bilingual experience so far is that I have already caught myself thinking in a Kiwi accent. I find myself picking up accents and mannerisms very quickly regardless of where I am, but this time it’s been a bit unique. When I hear myself in my head, I have a flawless Kiwi accent. So then I think, “I wonder if I can talk like that” (I wonder that in a lovely Kiwi accent, by the way). So I try, and discover each time that, in fact, I cannot. Not even close.

I had a dream about it as well: I was with a class of preschoolers, singing the ABCs, and realized that I should sing it in a Kiwi accent. In the dream, the shift was perfect and I sang like a true New Zealander. I woke up and tried it, with no success. I feel like it will come, but not yet.

Generalizations

An amusing side effect of moving to a country about which you know very little is how easy it is it make sweeping generalizations if you’re not careful. It makes me feel ridiculous, but I have to admit that it happens for a second, before I catch myself.

Example #1: We drove down a residential street, and saw a car parked in the middle of a lawn, and I thought, “Apparently, in NZ, it is appropriate to park on people’s lawns.”

Example #2: We went to the grocery store (Countdown) to buy sliced turkey meat for sandwiches, and could not find any anywhere in the store, leading to the obvious conclusion that there is no sliced turkey anywhere in NZ.

Now before you start thinking how utterly ridiculous this is, I should point out that I do not let these generalizations last very long, as least without some actual proof. But I am impressed with the insistence of these conclusions, and with how reasonable they seem in the moment. I think that it is a product of how eager I am to find patterns and figure things out here. Anything that seems like a way to make sense of this new place is seductive in its simplicity and comfort. I want to know if we can park on the grass, and if we should give up our search of sliced turkey before we waste any more time, so it is tempting to jump to the first conclusion that presents itself as a possibility. Silly and judgmental, but tempting. Fortunately, we will be here plenty long enough to gather and analyze enough information to get, we hope, a good sense of what Kiwi life is really like.

Note: After further investigation, it does seem, in some neighbourhoods, to be common practice to park partway onto your lawn, to get your car off the narrow streets. It is unclear if this is considered impolite, but we were told that if it’s your own lawn, go ahead. In many neighbourhoods, however, almost all houses have driveways, and in those places we have not seen any lawn parking.