How to Speak Kiwi

Before anything else, I thought that I should first familiarize you with how Kiwis (people from New Zealand) speak english. I've attached a 'pronounciation guide' so you'll see what I mean. Just click on the image to enlarge it.

Everything is up-side-down in New Zealand. Aside from driving on the 'other side' of the road, their accent is different from what I'm used to. The sound of the letter 'e' becomes an 'i'. And the 'i' sounds like an 'e'. For instance, when they say 'yes' or 'pregnant', it sounds like 'yis' and 'prignant'.

'Fish' becomes 'fesh' and so on. So if you want to buy beer, you go to a store that's similar to a 'Sivin Ilivin' and get a 'sex pack'. Our favorite would be this Real Estate TV show where the host would say something like " ...this house has 3 bidrooms, 2 bathrooms and a BIG DICK (big deck)... And this commercial for a furniture store '...we've got the beast beads (best beds) in Wellington..."

The letter Z (zee) is called 'zed ' here, I think the same as in Australia. When I was working as a Graphic Designer a few years ago, I had a client seated beside me who kept telling me 'no, no... just type zed'. So I kept on typing z, e, d. And he kept insisting that I not type the 'e' and 'd' and instead just type zed. Which I did - z, e, d, zed! :P

Interesting Fact:
* In ilonggo, kiwi` means crooked (or baluktot in tagalog).