Kiwi speak

You know there's a possibility that it's going to be 'one of those days' when you fail to notice that sure, you turned the gas element on, it's just that you forgot to put the kettle onto it after the flame was lit ... sigh.

And it occured to me that my New Zealand/Australian readership is small and that if anyone else had heard me call myself 'a plonker' this morning, they might have had no idea of what I was talking about ...

'Plonker' has pretty much the same meaning as 'idiot'.
And as I write that, I hear Canadian and American friends laughing, and it reminds me that they have picked up some of my charming phrases ... with Alison reporting that she had called someone 'a girl's blouse' when she went home to Canada last time.

'Girl's blouse' well ... that's one way of saying you think that someone's a bit of chicken or a coward.

But of course, you say.

Back in New Zealand, I'm almost sure that I rarely used these little Kiwi delights but Shannon's first question on meeting me was 'Do you guys really say by crikey'?

I didn't know and asked Gert when I got home.
Of course I do ... apparently ... and then I began hearing myself and noticed that when Gert was in unserious trouble, I did have a tendency to say things like 'By crikey you're in a lot of trouble' ... always accompanied by laughter, I hasten to add.

It's odd but leaving my country and being around people who mock me for my pronunciation of words like 'Ben' (apparently I pronounce it Bin), 'guest' ... yes well I murder that word, and 'actually' which apparently sounds more like 'exually' ... to name a few, has left me seeking my kiwi linguistic identity in ways that I avoided back home. I have become friends with my vowel sounds ... I'm beginning to embrace my linguistic identity.

I guess I knew there were problems when the Romanian and the Pole in my Nederlands class where almost on the floor laughing over the way I pronounce 'Brad Pitt'.

When I teach, I tidy my English ... but then I relax and the mocking begins.

Gert phoned in as I was writing this post and I asked him what else I say to him. He reminded me that the best so far, in terms of shocked disbelief, was the time I mocked him with ... 'Tsk tsk tsk, send a boy to do a man's job'. And even as it slipped out of my mouth, I could see the old farmer leaning on a fence post mocking his son.

To understand the New Zealand connection to the pictures I used, you can wander over to this site .