Lost in Translation

Before I came to New Zealand, I never really thought the accent was all that strong - only with some weird little things that sound funny when said by the Flight of the Conchords guys.

But over the months there have been several times where I’ve had to ask someone to repeat something again and again because it just does not make sense! I’ve also (only just) started to understand the difference between the Aussie/Kiwi accent - Aussies are really frickin’ LOUD for one thing, and their vowels are much broader. The Kiwi accent’s really clipped, all the vowels are short and squeaky. The Maori accent is also different, almost a mix between Aussie and Kiwi…and also just something else all together that I can’t put my finger on.
They pronounce “wh” as an F, i.e. Whakatane is said ‘Fakataaknee’; “au” is pronounced as an O, i.e. Tauranga is said ‘To-runga’ - also their “g” or “ng” sounds more like an ‘ing’ than a ‘gah’. 

One of the funniest moments where all this difference made for a lot of confusion was when I was doing my cleaning job up in the Bay of Plenty. The guy that was showing me the ropes, Frankie (a Maori, so the accent’s stronger still) was telling me that this wasn’t his usual job, he was just helping my boss out. I asked him what he did and he said
”I’m a nonce“ 
which obviously stopped me in my tracks! I asked him to repeat himself and he said it again,
”I’m a nonce”! 
I didn’t want to say what I thought I’d heard, just say ‘YOU’RE A NONCE?!’, so I flapped for a minute on how to respond and came out with
”err wuh…what does that mean?“ 
”I’m a nonce, you know, with a lawn mower”
”OHHHHH!!!! You mow lawns. Right. Gottit.“ 
Haha.

There’s also the odd occurrence of  someone saying 
”I’ve got six dicks” = “I’ve got six decks”
And sex becomes ‘six’ and swim becomes ‘swum’ and just all sorts.

Stuart had a similar one today:
”Hi I’m Stuart”
“Hi I’m Tum”
“Hi Tom nice to meet you”
“No, Tum”
”Tim?”
“Yes!“