Here are some words spoken by a New Zealand woman, Glennis Ryder. Glennis grew up in Foxton (near Palmerston North, in the lower half of the North Island). She is of European descent. At the time of the recording she was 37 years old and had never been overseas. Glennis gave permission for her voice to be used on this website and for these facts about her to be made public.
Click on the speaker to hear her pronunciation of the words in that row. Each row of words has been recorded as an ".aif" file.
If you have either "theWebPlayer for Mac" or "SciconWeb for PC", it will draw on your screen an excellent pitch plot and spectrogram of these sounds. These applications are available at no charge from: http://www.sciconrd.com
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tree | student | Paul | |
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tour | water | enthusiasm | |
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nuclear | nude | ||
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dunce | dance | chance | |
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example | transplant | ||
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pulp | gulf | golf | |
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peering | baring | pairing | |
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doll | dole | colt | |
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fire | fireman | fire engine | |
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tower | towers | towering | |
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fewer | cure | curing | |
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batted | battered | ||
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sense | cents | ||
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assume | presume | ||
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boring | boar | board | bored |
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city | seedy | ||
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rule | gruel | ||
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fault | fort | ||
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tune | dune | ||
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Pete | pit | pet | pat |
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put | pot | putt | |
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baddy | daddy | ||
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bee | bay | buy | |
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bough | bow | boy | |
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boot | boat | bout | |
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ferry | fairy | ||
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bird | bard | ||
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pull | pool | pill | |
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fellow | fallow | ||
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kill | cull | ||
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reel | real | ||
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poor | pour | pore | paw |
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groan | grown | ||
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moan | mown | ||
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allusion | illusion | ||
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weather | whether | ||
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beer | bear | ||
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here | hair | ear | air |
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fear | fair | fare | |
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spear | spare | shear | share |
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kea | care | cheer | chair |
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really | rarely |
These words have been identified as
potentially diagnostic of New Zealand English in Holmes and Bell
(1988):
Holmes, Janet & Allan Bell. (1988). Learning by experience:
Notes for New Zealand social dialectologists. Te Reo 31,19-50.
The information on this page was provided
on 11
September 2000.
The author of this page is:
John
Newman
Department of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
University of Alberta
Edmonton AB, T6G 2E7
Canada
john.newman@ualberta.ca