New Zealanders were amused to read that Mr David Blunkett required them to show fluency in English if they apply for British citizenship. New Zealand has produced some fine philologists, such as the late Norman Davis and Robert Burchfield, to teach us about our language. It has its own proper dialect that most of us neglect, or lump with Australian English. Oxford University Press has published a dictionary of New Zealand English and one of its slang, but popularly we still tend to conflate the two. Here are some examples I have found in newspapers or on the Internet: bach ‘small holiday home’; bludge ‘to sponge’; chook ‘chicken’; dairy ‘corner shop’; hoon ‘rough person’; judder bar ‘speed hump’; pottle ‘small container’; skiting ‘bragging’; smoko ‘a break’; sook ‘moody person’.
Some NZ terms are the same as Australian and some are not.
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