New Zealand English: phonology

The historical background

The first discoverers of New Zealand were Polynesian explorers around AD 925, and settlement by Polynesians was well established by 1150. Europeans arrived in the form of the Dutchman Abel Tasman in 1642. A result of Tasman’s visit is the name New Zealand, given to the islands by Dutch cartographers later in the seventeenth century. The first contact of New Zealand with the English language can be dated to Captain Cook’s arrival on the Endeavour in 1769. It was Cook who claimed New Zealand for the British Crown. Until the arrival of Euro peans, the only language spoken in New Zealand had been Maori, the language of the Polynesian settlers. English-speakers were not the only European settlers, but clearly made up a large proportion of the early missionaries and traders to come to New Zealand. Many of these early English-speaking settlers came not from Britain, but from Australia, where there were strong trading links. Indeed, until 1841 New Zealand was officially a dependency of New South Wales. Although it had been established as the language of the colonial administration by the early nineteenth century, English was still not widespread amongst the Maori population. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by Maori chiefs and representatives of the British Government, established British colonial rule in New Zealand, and opened the way for more systematic migration from Britain and Australia. Large-scale organized settlement now began in earnest, for instance, the Europeans in New Zealand numbered some 2,000 in 1838 but nearer 10,000 by 1842. This increase in settlement meant that by the middle of the nineteenth century the English-speaking population outnumbered Maori-speakers.

We can distinguish different waves of settlement which may have had influence on the development of New Zealand English. The first covers the period 1840– 1860, and involved planned settlement by a number of organizations. The New Zealand Company established settlements in Wellington and Nelson, with populations originating from London and the south-east of England. The Ply mouth Company placed settlers from Devon and Cornwall in the Taranaki region, founding the city of New Plymouth. In the South Island, Otago in the deep south was settled by the Scottish free-church, while Canterbury’s early settlers were Anglo-Catholic. Other historically interesting pockets of settlement include Waipu in Northland, which was settled by Scottish highlanders who had become dissatisfied with their earlier attempts to establish a community in Nova Scotia.

The second wave of settlement followed the discovery of gold, and resulted in a dramatic increase in the population of gold-field areas in the period 1860–1870. The areas most affected were Otago and the West Coast of the South Island, which gained a large number of settlers from Australia.

Planned immigration from the 1870s onwards forms the third wave of settlement. The majority of the early settlers in this period originated from southern England, and as many as 10 per cent from Cornwall alone.

By 1890 the population growth from New Zealand-born Europeans exceeded that from new settlement and it is probably from this point that the influence on New Zealand English from native New Zealanders begins to outweigh that of British or Australian varieties.

It is interesting to note that despite the pattern of rather focused early settlement from certain areas of Britain into certain areas of New Zealand, the forms of English that have evolved in New Zealand are remarkably homogeneous, with very little dialectal variation throughout New Zealand. It is also noteworthy that the early influence of Australia was strong. Not only was Australia an early trading partner and provider of continuing settlement, but also many of the trading and communication links between parts of New Zealand occurred via Australia. For instance, the sea-link from Auckland across the Tasman and back to Wellington was for a long time easier than the land route through the New Zealand bush.