Sound change in progress

Many of the phonemes are currently undergoing change in NZE. The post-vocalic /r/ that is still heard in Southland, for example, is decreasing markedly in frequency. Some older rural males, for example, still use it over 80% of the time, but most younger urban speakers use it only after the NURSE vowel and no more than 20% of the time. As post-vocalic /r/ has decreased in most contexts in Southland, urban speakers have increased their use of a rhotic NURSE vowel, so that it may be becoming a mark of Southland identity. These patterns are demonstrated in the audio clips from the three Southland speakers, described above. The /M/ ~ /w/ distinction that is still maintained by some speakers in Southland has almost disappeared elsewhere. Older women from higher social classes now use it less than 50% of the time in reading tasks and less still in conversation. The most salient class markers, the closing diphthongs FACE, PRICE, MOUTH and GOAT, have changed slightly over time, but the relative differences between Cultivated and Broad pronunciations have been maintained. Younger speakers, however, both male and female, are leading in the move to pronounce the second element of MOUTH as [ə] rather than a [ʊ] or [ʉ].

We will consider the vowel changes that are currently taking place in NZE followed by the consonantal changes. Most of the information comes from analyses of the Canterbury Corpus, an archive held at the University of Canterbury which consists of over 350 recordings of speakers chosen so that there are approximately equal numbers of younger (20–30 years) and older (45–60 years) speakers, of upper and lower social class speakers and of men and women. Each speaker reads a word list designed to emphasize features of NZE and engages in 30 minutes of casual conversation with a student interviewer.