Talk:New Zealand English phonology

social class

Although it is implied in the article, many (perhaps most) of the differences between what is called "NZ English" and other forms of English by the article appear to me as a New Zealander to actually be differences in speech associated with social origins/social class. Instead the article (perhaps unintentionally) implies that lower social class accents are NZ English, when it practice these pronunciations are associated with social origins rather than nationality. 59.102.61.38 (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

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Re: "some kiwis i heard don't always merge the /ɪ/ with /ɘ/"

@Awesomemeeos: Regarding this edit summary of yours, the mere fact that some Kiwis realize stressed /ɘ/ as relatively close and front doesn't mean that they have a separate /ɪ/ phoneme, just as the fact that the final sounds of words such as comma or China are commonly as open as [ɐ] doesn't mean that the correct phonemic analysis of them is /ˈkɒmɐ, ˈtʃɑenɐ/ (although Wells seems to consider it a valid transcription).

To prove your assertion, we'd need a thorough study of unstressed /ɪ/ and /ə/ in NZE. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: Hi, I was just writing that as a trivial statement ;) It's not really supposed to be taken that seriously. I also doubt if they fully have that merger, since I believe Kiwis still see it as two different sounds (I mean they would have a problem understanding the rest of the world as they pronounce it closer and fronter than /ɘ/). Sometimes us Aussies seem to consider final phonemic COMMA as a separate vowel sometimes - it does sound normal to transcribe it phonemically as written above. But that's just my viewpoint. Once again, don't take it too seriously. — ^{they call me} AWESOMEmeeos ... [ˈɔɪ̯]! 20:46, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: I thought so, but I still wanted to reply. And since I wanted to reply, I had to take you somewhat seriously, no? :P

They actually do. Here's what Wells (1982:606–607) says about this:

New Zealand [ɪ] does not contrast with [ə], and New Zealanders studying phonetics usually find it unrealistic to distinguish the phonemic symbols /ɪ/ and /ə/. Accordingly it seems sensible to symbolize the New Zealand KIT vowel as /ə/, as /ðəs θəŋ/. (...) The centrality of New Zealand KIT means that there is no doubt at all about the HAPPY vowel: it belongs with FLEECE, /iː/, and not with KIT. City is /ˈsətiː/, invisibility is /ˈənvəzəˈbələtiː/ (compare old-fashioned RP /ˈɪnvɪzɪˈbɪlɪtɪ/, nowadays usually /ˈɪnvɪzəˈbɪlətɪ/).

Why would they? The amount of American TV series and movies native speakers from other countries watch and the amount of American music they listen to is unbelievable. And since most American speakers have a normal [ɪ] sound, people from New Zealand are definitely familiar with it (if they weren't, they would have even more problems with Australian [i], no?). Also, /ɪ/ and /ə/ were hardly contrastive even before the merger, which is also the case in the General Australian accent. /ə/ doesn't ever appear in stressed syllables, so even after the merger it's easy to guess that all instances of stressed /ə/ correspond to /ɪ/ in other dialects.

Yes, this kind of transcription is based on native speakers' feelings that these words belong to the STRUT class rather than the COMMA one. And it may be justified, especially in the case of NzE. Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:21, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: Haha, got me there (bugger)... oh wait! Care to explain the Variation in New Zealand vowels table under the Cultivated section? ;) — ^{they call me} AWESOMEmeeos ... [ˈɔɪ̯]! 12:57, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: What's confusing about it? Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:21, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: See my latest message on Talk:South African English phonology#Separate entries for START and LETTER vowels and tell me whether it explains the issue to you. Just substitute NZE for SAE, KIT for NORTH and FORCE and COMMA for THOUGHT. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:15, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Inappropriate content

This doesn't belong to this article:

• Common in spoken New Zealand is the use of the word "like" as a quotative, discourse marker or as a hedge, similar to its use in "Valleyspeak" belonging to the "valley girl" stereotype of the United States. This appears to have been adopted by young New Zealanders during the 1980s when "Valleyspeak" became popularized internationally through music and media of the time. Katie Drager, associate professor in sociolinguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, showed that New Zealand English speakers have distinct uses for 'like' and that they pronounce each type of 'like' slightly differently (so that e.g. "He was like 'yeah' and she was like 'no'" would have a different pronunciation from "And, like, it was raining"). Australian English did not develop in this way and thus this feature remains a distinct difference between Australian and New Zealand colloquial English.
• New Zealand English is well known for the frequent use of the word "eh", where it is used by New Zealanders after sentences to mean many things such as "is it?", "isn't it", "it definitely is", "excuse me/pardon", "do you agree?", "that is true", "what?", "are you serious?", "didn't you? [accusative]", "I mean what I said", etc. The Māori word nei has similar meaning and usage. The New Zealand usage of the word "eh" is also increasingly filtering into Australian English and can often be heard in similar usages especially by Western Australians and Sydneysiders, possibly due to the higher numbers of New Zealand immigrants living in those areas. Queenslanders too claim the use of "eh" to be a marker of their local dialect which is unattributed to any New Zealand influence.
• The frequency of the Australian-derived "yeah-no" marker is occurring more in New Zealand English although whereas the age demographic in Australian usage is 35-49 this is not conclusive in New Zealand usage. Australian usage has been documented at least as early as 2002.

References

Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:12, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that stuff would be better placed at New Zealand English — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:12, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Velarised /l/

/l/ is certainly not velarised in all positions by all speakers. I haven't heard it among the South Islanders I have frequent contact with, nor among the North Islanders I have occasional contact with or hear on radio and TV. It is velarised before a consonant and before a pause. When velarised, it colours a small range of vowels (the coat/coal divide and the food/fool divide), with the result that many New Zealanders drop the /l/ in these positions, and this has extended to /l/ following other vowels, where it is vocalised as a [u]. Prevocalic /l/ is neither velarised nor vocalised. Koro Neil (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

@Koro Neil: Wikipedia is based on WP:SOURCES and those uniformly say that NZE /l/ is velarized. I haven't heard any New Zealand that would use a clear /l/ by the way (I'm not speaking about those who speak quasi-RP, I also haven't heard many Maoris). In General NZE, it's definitely always velarized (when it's not vocalized), as in Australia and much of the United States, Canada and Scotland. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Is there a better way to word this? It seems strange to say "this happens all the time" and then in the next sentence "there's variation in how often this happens." — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:08, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Revised. The first sentence was about both velarization and vocalization while the second one was only about the latter. Look at the context in which the second sentence was added 14 years ago. Nardog (talk) 06:25, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

/oe/

/oe/ can be closing-fronting as well as just fronting

/oe/ is fronting according to the vowel chart given in the article - closing diphtongs, part 2. Close-mid back to close-mid front, to be precise. Erkin Alp Güney 13:36, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Erkinalp9035: Please look for the phonetic quality of NZE diphthongs are as follows in the article. /oe/ as it's represented on our vowel chart is just one of a few possible realizations of the diphthong. Only this one is fronting rather than closing-fronting. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:52, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Pool vowel

The only u-vowels in the article are [ʉː] (as in "too") and [ʊ] (as in "pull"). However, there is also a separate "pool" vowel [uː] , which is not mentioned in the article except for saying these 3 can all the same (a footnote containing "/ʊ/ and /ʉː/ (pull /pʊl/ vs pool /pʉːl/) ... may be merged" – except that pronouncing pool as [pʉːl] makes you sound like youre trying to be posh). Adding an /l/ to the end of "too" [tʉː] does not usually make it "tool" [tuː(w)l].  Nixinova   T   C   04:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

The article on /u/ even mentions this under NZEN, as the dark-l in "treacle" [ˈtɹ̝̊iːku]. It does have refs for that as well.  Nixinova   T   C   00:07, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

IPA symbols for the short vowels

Just like the anon, I'm for transcribing the LOT vowel with ⟨ɔ⟩ (⟨ɞ⟩ would be even better, capturing the centralization), but changing the way we transcribe the DRESS vowel is IMO the priority. There's not a single other set of symbols used for a dialect of English that uses both ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨e⟩ in the way this system does (indeed, how often is the TRAP vowel written as such?), and the former is very easily confused with the latter due to the fact that NZE is perceived by laymen as "using the DRESS vowel instead of the TRAP vowel", which is of course inaccurate. IMO we should change ⟨e⟩ to ⟨ɪ⟩. Surely there's at least one source that writes DRESS with ⟨ɪ⟩, due to its rather extreme closeness? And if there isn't, perhaps we should stop using ⟨ɛ⟩ and use the RP symbol ⟨æ⟩ instead? The South African TRAP vowel is basically the same as in New Zealand (perhaps only very slightly more open than that), yet Lass 1990 prefers ⟨æ⟩ for it anyway. He also writes the DRESS vowel with ⟨e⟩.

But using ⟨æ⟩ is seriously inaccurate as far as NZE vowel space is concerned. The TRAP vowel contrasts with STRUT primarily by height, not by backness. So I wouldn't support that change.

The non-front vowels /ɒ/ and /ʊ/ are, of course, better transcribed with ⟨ɞ⟩ and ⟨ɨ⟩, capturing their height, backness and, in the second case, lack of rounding. But nobody transcribes them as such - as far as I know anyway (Rogers does use ⟨ɞ⟩, but for NURSE). Perhaps we can switch ⟨ɒ⟩ to ⟨ɔ⟩ to make the transcription of LOT the same as its Australian counterpart (which is more back but not less open than the New Zealand vowel). This is something I wouldn't edit war over, though. The South African vowel (written ⟨ɒ̝̈⟩ by Lass, but judging by the written description of the vowel he actually means ⟨ɒ̜̽⟩ or ⟨ɑ̹̽⟩) is similarly centralized but less rounded, so maybe using ⟨ɒ⟩ is not such a bad idea. It's definitely immediately recognizable as LOT, as that's how the symbol is used in transcriptions of RP.

EDIT: I've changed ⟨ɒ⟩ to ⟨ɑ⟩ in South African English phonology, per Lass (1990) and other sources. It contrasts with PALM purely by length.

As for the FOOT vowel, ⟨ɵ⟩ would be a nice compromise, as that's how we write the South African vowel. But New Zealand sources use it for the NURSE vowel, though with a length mark. And since the fronted FOOT vowel is unrounded, maybe using ⟨ɵ⟩ for it is not the best idea. Sol505000 (talk) 10:33, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I think what we have currently is fine and not confusing. If there's not any other dialect that uses as similar sounds as NZ re:[e~ɛ] then the page shouldn't try to replicate them anyway, I don't think; using both ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨e⟩ is fine and accurate, and I can barely even make an [æ] sound anyway. And you mentioned changing the kit vowel at the start then didn't elaborate; did you mean something else?  Nixinova   T   C   22:07, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Dang, I meant the DRESS vowel. And I've just realized Scottish English uses both ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨e⟩, for DRESS and FACE, respectively. Sol505000 (talk) 07:42, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

"Younger" and "older" speakers

The article mentions "younger" and "older" speakers a dozen times, but the references are from 20 years ago. When you think "younger speaker" now you're thinking Gen Z/late Millennials while the sources would mean Millennials/Gen X. These mentions should be made more specific.  Nixinova   T   C   21:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Problem with the transcription table

The transcription table compares phonemic representations which are not directly comparable between the accent pages. The most egregious example is writing Australian NURSE as ɜː when it is actually ɵː. This makes the table slightly misleading.  Nixinova   T   C   06:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that no source uses ⟨ɵː⟩ for the Australian sound. And I'm not so sure that it's definitely rounded. Cox & Fletcher use the symbol ⟨ɜː⟩ according to its old definition as a "variety of [ə]", so not specifically open-mid (which it definitely isn't, it's more or less close-mid central) and, AFAIK, not even specifically (un)rounded. I think that NZE and South African English (and Southern Welsh English?) are unique among (non-rhotic, at least) the varieties of English in that they feature a consistently rounded NURSE vowel. I think that AuE is more like cockney in that NURSE varies between unrounded and rounded, though the typical Australian sound is closer. Sol505000 (talk) 18:28, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Lack of justification for writing /əŋ/ as /iːŋ/

The decision to write "ing" as /iːŋ/ instead of the expected /əŋ/ is problematic.

This merger is assumed in transcriptions in this article, which is why ring and writing are transcribed /ɹiːŋ/ and /ˈɹaɪtiːŋ/ (note that when the g is dropped, the vowel also changes: [ˈɹaɪɾən]; such forms are not transcribed in this article). This makes FLEECE the only tense vowel that is permitted before /ŋ/. Some speakers also use this variant before /ɡ/ and, less often, before other consonants. As both KIT and FLEECE can occur in those environments, it must then be analysed as an allophone of KIT. It is transcribed with a plain ⟨ə⟩ in this article and so not differentiated from other allophones of /ə/.

These sentences provide several items of evidence against the claim that "ing" is phonemically /iːŋ/. When the G is dropped it goes back to [ə], and /əŋ/→/ən/ is a much more realistic substitution than /iːŋ/→/ən/. And then the article even says this usage when not with /ŋ/ is just an allophone of KIT! Let alone the fact that this completely breaches English phonotactics.
Instances of /iːŋ/ should be changed to /əŋ/ and this whole text should be nuked and just replaced with simply Some speakers also use this variant before /ɡ/ and, less often, before other consonants.
 Nixinova   T   C   06:42, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

NZE has its own phonotactical rules (just like the conservative varieties of RP and White South African English, which allow final /ɪ/ in HAPPY). In other dialects, /ə/ is an unstressed-only vowel, unless it merges with /ʊ/ or /ʌ/. In NZE, it is stressable due to the merger with KIT. With that said, I agree with you and I'll change the article accordingly. Sol505000 (talk) 18:08, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Re this edit, [ˈɹaɪɾən] is not an "improper" transcription. There are levels of narrowness of phonetic/allophonic transcription and I don't think we want a fully narrow transcription here. Sol505000 (talk) 15:01, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Keeping "pell" and "pal" distinct

NZ has the celary-salary merger, so /el/ -> /ɛl/. However, for monosyllabic words the two may be kept separate with a length distinction: "pell" //pel// [pʰɛɫ] vs "pal" //pæl// [pʰɛ:ɫ]. This length distinction is maintained when the L is vocalised - "pal" would be homophonous to "pow" while "pell" wouldn't. Is this mentioned in any sources?  Nixinova   T   C   06:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. What you mention is a good reason not to transcribe any prelateral mergers in phonemic transcription. The distinction you describe would typically be dismissed as a simple "lack of merger", I guess. But I could be wrong. Sol505000 (talk) 07:01, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

No, this is even with a full el-al merger. This long phoneme only seems to occur in loans from American English, as the only words I can think of with this long vowel are 'ass', 'gal', and 'pal'. Something like a marginal phoneme for these words. Other recent words I can think of like 'bal' use the short (merged) vowel as expected.  Nixinova   T   C   05:17, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I've only ever heard of the Australian-style bad-lad split in NZE. No source I'm aware of gives [ɛː] a phonemic status, let alone only in loans from American English. Sol505000 (talk) 13:31, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

/ə~a/ neutralisation

In the morpheme-final position, the distinction between /ə/ (KIT, COMMA, LETTER) and /a/ (STRUT) is neutralized towards the open /a/ in the word-final position and towards the mid /ə/ elsewhere. – This is slightly wrong in that /ə/ is pronouced [a] also in syllables immediately preceeding a stressed syllable. The word "about" is not [ə]bout but [a]bout.  Nixinova   T   C   05:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I also think that this should still be denoted with /ə/. When linking R is applied to "lava" you go from "la:va"+"əz" = "la:vərəz".  Nixinova   T   C   03:45, 25 June 2023 (UTC)