Nailing the NZ Accent

I was warned before coming here that the kiwi accent would be hard to understand. I definitely find myself just tuning it out sometimes, because I have to really focus to pick up on everything. My road trip buddy Will and I have been trying to master the accent ourselves and I must say we’ve been *pretty* successful so far. Mostly we just say the phrase ‘second Sunday in September’ at least once an hour. Will heard a lady say it one time in passing, and it quickly became our catchphrase. She’ll never know how important that line was to us. I’ll phonetically sound it out for you because then you’ll see how perfect a phrase it is to practice this accent. “See-cant sun-dee In sept-teem-bah!” It’s all about nailing down that ‘E.’ (Update: wrote this at least a week ago and we haven’t been saying this phrase anymore, maaaybe we overused it a tad bit).
We’ll also say random things we see on the side of the road for practice, and Will frequently says “gdday!” really loudly at odd times. Basically, we are crushing it.

Another point of contention is how to pronounce Manuka. Most people seem to say ‘mah-noo-kah ‘ but I was told by a native north islander that the correct way is ‘mah-nah-kah.’ This pronunciation endeavor will probably be inconclusive, but it’s fun to have something to tune in to. I’ve only been here for a few weeks and really haven’t talked to many locals, so hopefully I will pick up more phrases as the weeks go on. So far I’ve only heard “sweet as” a few times which is not enough! My favorite takeaway word is ‘keen.’ Pretty basic, I know, but it’s just a very useful short word, much better than saying “I’m interested in.” So yup, I’m keen to keep listening to some fun accents and words as the weeks go on. Toodles!