NEW ZEALANDERS SPEECH

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22443, 2 July 1938, Page 15

NEW ZEALANDERS SPEECH

VIEWS OF VISITING EXAMINER

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(PBESS ASSOCIATION TEUEGBJIII.)

WELLINGTON, July 1-

Australians talk Cockney, but New Zealanders talk more like the average Englishman, according to Mr R. E. Besant, of Trinity College of Music, London, who arrived today by the Rangitiki from London to conduct examinations in elocution throughout New Zealand. Mr Besant said that New Zealanders spoke with a distinct accent of their own, but it was more like the ordinary English accent than the speech of any other part of the Empire. There was, however, a tendency to use short vowels and to pronounce words differently from the usual English way. Australians talked with a distinct Cockney accent. They had always done so, and that mode of speech was heard nowhere else, except in London. It had the same peculiarities as Cockney and probably arose from the influence of the convict settlements in early Australian history. In England there was a wide variety of accents, and each county still retained its own peculiar dialect. The “Oxford accent,” of which so much was heard, was rather an affected affair.. There were different distinctions in.modes of speech, according to social class and so on, but there was always a standard English spoken by the majority of educated people. Undoubtedly the influence of radio and the cinema on English speech was considerable. American films had introduced a good deal of slang and useless, ugly, and often meaningless phrases. Many words of American origin had become adopted as part of the English language. . , , The radio and the cinema had a levelling tendency toward a universally similar speech. “In 50 years we may all speak in the same way,” Mr Besant added.