Accent means pronouncing words in a certain manner that depends on the country where you are living. It is not possible that every people living in the planet will have the same type of accent. Some people even have an accent living in the same country or even in the same state as well.
However, the accent between New Zealanders or the Kiwis and the Australians have a major difference. These two countries speak English and the way they speak has got a certain difference in their accent.
It might have had happened that you have noticed the New Zealand Cricket captain speaking English whenever there are a match and the same case for the Australian Cricket captain too.
New Zealand Accent vs Australian Accent
The difference between the New Zealand accent and the Australian accent is their vowel pronunciation because the Kiwis tend to change the vowels and replace them with ‘I’ on something like ‘U’ whereas the Australians draws out the vowels.
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Might seem like a small change in their way of speaking but the Kiwis definitely got a different type of accent on them that makes them identifiable. If you are curious to know how there is a difference between the two then look it up on YouTube and see how they speak.
Comparison Table
| Parameters of Comparison | New Zealand Accent | Australian Accent |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Originated from the people of Britain. | Australian accent was originated by the mixture of both British and American English. |
| Examples | The term ‘Yes’ is pronounced as ‘yiss’ and the term ‘fish’ is pronounced as ‘fush’. | Australians tend to use the short vowel ‘ae’ in pronouncing words like ‘demand’, ‘plant’. |
| Composition | Since the accent has originated from the immigrants of British the Kiwis has got British dialect input. | The Australians use a mixed nature. |
| Eliminated vowel | The Kiwis have eliminated the use of vowel in their pronunciation. | The Aussies use vowels. |
What is New Zealand Accent?
The Kiwis have a different kind of accent and a unique one too. The way they speak can easily be differentiated by the use of their accent. There is a difference between them and Australians because the Kiwis tend to eliminate the use of vowels while they speak.
Vowels are important but not using them in a sentence or while speaking can be another reason for their accent recognition. For people who have never noticed the accent of New Zealand then you will not know how they speak.
It would become impossible to identify the difference between Australians and the Kiwis.
Lookup videos where New Zealand people are speaking and then you will start to understand the use of certain words differently while they speak. The accent brought by the Kiwis was originated by the immigrants of Britain.
And you might know how British English is and this is why you can find some similarity between the accent of the Kiwis and the British people.
There should be no confusion between the accent of the Kiwis and the Australians because the Kiwis will pronounce the word ‘haich’ in the silent letter ‘H’. The Kiwis will speak it as ‘aich’ or even read it in the same manner.
This is what makes the difference between Australians speaking and Kiwis speaking English.
What is Australian Accent?
Many countries speak the English language but it is the accent that makes all the difference. Australian English is such where the Australians tend to draw the vowels while they speak as they too have a mixture origination of British and Australians.
You can also notice the accent of people speaking English from other countries too. For example, an Arabic person will speak it differently than an African. Similarly, there is a difference in how Australians speak when compared to the Kiwis.
Since the origin of the Australian accent is a mixture of British and American English it often happens that you get confused between the two. However, Australians do not make a huge difference while pronouncing vowels like eliminating them while they speak.
The Aussies just draw the vowels almost similar to how the British people do. Since they have got a mixture of British and American Aussies sometimes use a British accent as well.
Main Differences Between New Zealand Accent and Australian Accent
- The origin of the New Zealand accent was from the immigrants from Britain whereas the origin of the Australian accent was a mixture of British and American language.
- The Kiwis tend to eliminate the use of vowels while they speak.
- Examples: for Kiwis the word ‘yes’ is pronounced as ‘yiss’ whereas the Australians use short vowel like ‘ae’.
- Since both accents have a common origin in Britain sometimes the people of both countries tend to use the British accent.
- The Australian accent does not eliminate the use of vowels but instead, they have got longer vowels.
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9481.00136
- https://games.jmir.org/2014/1/e3/?newDesign
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Piyush Yadav has spent the past 25 years working as a physicist in the local community. He is a physicist passionate about making science more accessible to our readers. He holds a BSc in Natural Sciences and Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Science. You can read more about him on his bio page.
