Kiwi slang and pronunciation. Can you understand the kiwi accent?

- Man it is hard to understand the kiwi accent and slang when you first come here AND when you have lived here for awhile! I actually find it hard to use a New Zealand accent and some of their slang terms because they feel odd to me. I would love to know your experience!

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[Kiwi-NZ]

From a born & bred New Zealander who has lived in Wisconsin, my opinion regarding the difference in customer service between NZ & Americans was that I felt that the average trained American in hospitality to me sounded very scripted and robotic everywhere that I went. (No offence, that was my experience). Virtually everyone said for example; have a great day, and many looking miserable while communicating this, even in the very late evening when the day was virtually over which I would always find amusing.
I think New Zealanders are given the opportunity to be more free to be more of their true ‘authentic selves’, pleasant but never encouraged to be over the top or too repetitive with their customer service. Our culture is definitely very much more laid back than the American culture.
This is what makes this world so much more interesting, if we were all the same it would be incredibly boring! New Zealanders understand each other just fine, this is our accent. If we started talking slower and rolling our R’s it would feel totally uncomfortable, as it would if we asked Americans to stop rolling their R’s and to talk much faster so that we could understand you better. One is not better than the other, just different. Let’s embrace our different cultures and accents, this is what makes travel so much fun and educational and socially interesting.

[carlh]

We love an extrovert as long as they don't walk over other people - either in their actions or with their volume.

[nataliechilds]

Yes, we (kiwis) aren't very accepting of feedback, constructive criticism is something I have to remind myself is a good thing. Also, giving good constructive feedback is important, we should embrace it more.

[maltnz]

Anyone I trained on using telephones (IT Helpdesk) the advice I gave was that people take a second to tune in their ears and start listening. Use a greeting (Good Morning or whatever) to tune your contact in, then give your name and reason for calling (speaking clearly and slowly).
If you are leaving a voice message summarize at the end ... name, company, telephone number and reason.
Use the phonetic alphabet (including numbers) to assist with names and numbers.

[gabriellecoe]

As someone’s who worked in hospitality for 5 years but has also visited the States I think you can’t really compare the two. Obviously you get paid at least min wage which is great, but unlike America where you have busboy, hostess, server, bartender etc in NZ a lot of the time you have to do all the roles. As we are paid more off the bat we are expected to do a lot more and are often driven into the ground. And unfortunately we just don’t have the time/energy to focus on the customer experience as much as we would like.

[kilgh]

I am not sure a lot of Kiwis would be comfortable with over the top fake feeling service. They tried it once in my local Bunnings to do the US style customer service (asking if you found everything you were looking for today and all the greetings at the door etc). It drove me nuts and they stopped doing it thankfully. Just let me shop/eat and leave me alone! lol.

[davidrayner]

Australian here. Many Americans can't distinguish between Australian and Kiwi accents. I've met hundreds of Kiwis in my time and had no problem understanding them but we once had a fellow at work from Invercargil and I couldn't understand a word he said. Not a single word.

[eileenhildreth]

As a kiwi I often miss names in phone calls too. They say their name and plunge straight into the reason for their call leaving the listener no time to process.

[lakelady]

I had a French teacher from Scotland (it worked :D) and she said we were the only country the could communicate with each other with a pencil in our mouth - we do mumble and talk very fast. When I lived in Canada I had to slow up and enunciate my words. I also had to clarify the colloquialisms. A family I worked with said that two of us together was totally foreign :D they had no idea what we were saying. We do carry a lot of historic slang from England and then there is the Māori input which gives our English a different blend. I agree with what you say as this is the feedback I have had over the years when travelling. Also when you live overseas for many years and you come home it is very interesting :).
Not everywhere but something you can run into in NZ is that the customer is not always right and you will be told so :D, a bit of take it or leave it which is not very productive but maybe brutally honest.

[Karen-ulhd]

In Auckland service at restaurants and cafes is really friendly, in a casual way, which I personally prefer to being 'served'

[meganf]

Some NZers might be getting offended because the way we speak relates to our values maybe? My theory as to why we New Zealanders don't speak clearly and mumble and speak fast.. (one of the reasons anyway) is the attitude we have that "nothing is that big of a deal" "she'll be right" etc. And also we don't want to sound as though what we have to say is that important because we're not allowed to sound as though we have something better to say than someone else.. haha. I often don't understand what other NZers are saying either.. 😛Also we're a small and relatively new country so our identity isn't very strong and so we tend get hurt when someone says anything critical about us.. lol

[stevie_M]

Hi I’ve been in customer service for many years and the main difference between the US and NZ is here you don’t get ‘good’ training unless you’re starting work in a large company (with a training program) most of our companies are small where you are trained on the job, not before you start, so if your lucky you’ll get a week in Auckland or head office training but not normally.

[maryanne]

glad i managed to catch ya live, and you are onpoint with some customer service. Some places are shocking, its typically a lack of good management from the business. Mostly I think the customer service is efficient, dont need too much interaction. Some people just dont have that good people skills.

[tomsemmens]

The problem with criticism in a small country is you've got to get on with the person you were criticising when you see them out and about on the weekend. Also, NZer's are used to either not being able to afford or unable to acquire the right people for a role, so the preference ends up being for a collective, colleagial approach where the weak links are coached by the rest of the team. I realise this is the absolute opposite of how Americans seem to think, but when it works you get really good results. In terms of customer service, New Zealanders still have a strong egalitarian myth where Jack is as as good as his master as a key value, so customer service - which for better or worse is experienced as master/servant relationship - is seen as an inferior job choice. Finally, New Zealanders tend to keep their feedback for informal channels post a meeting - the old idea of the most important thing anyone has to say about your dinner party is when they are pulling out of your driveway. I think that might be a throwback to British politeness as much as anything else.

[alanonline]

Yeah, it's a really interesting subject this one. One of my qualifications is in Corporate Communications and Public Relations Management, and there was a module which went over the different styles here and around the world.

On the feedback/constructive criticism: more direct styles of engaging on a person-to-person basis - like Kiwis often encounter overseas - can at times come across as very "combative" to many of us, when it is actually constructive in fact. In the same vein, when Kiwis are overseas (and I've worked in offices in the UK and elsewhere), they find many of us can sometimes approach matters too vaguely. So, we'll tend to say things like "If I could make a suggestion...", or "That's okay" (which might be accompanied by a non-verbal cue, look at the facial expression might give a hint!) which can actually mean "I really want to point out something that is bugging me A HELL OF A LOT about what you've done there!".

I've found in some places overseas that people are just straight up with "Actually, this bit? It needs a rewrite. This bit here is good, but on this section - try this instead?...".

Which doesn't bother me, I actually like it because we avoid all the fluff and can get on with the actual work of moving whatever it is forward (WHICH. IS. GREAT. AND. THE. POINT!) but I know it bugs many people I've worked with. And yeah, there's definitely good ways to handle it, and some pretty questionable ones which veer more into personal criticism than anything else.

Of course, there's people in between any of these extremes so to speak, but it's certainly a subject worth exploring more on your channel!

[moirapennell]

In NZ there is one dialect region. In Anglophone North America there are eighteen. In the British Isles there are about forty. Traditionally, all elements of NZ speech could be found in the dialect regions of the British Isles but latterly, some, particularly in the broad version, in North American dialect regions.All dialect regions in English have three broad registers: formal, general and broad. Usually all formal speakers regardless of dialect region, , are understood globally. Traditionally, they were better educated, professionals or academics. People who spoke the general version of the dialect, may not have been understood quite as readily, but would have been understood easily across the city, county, province or state and, in the NZ case countrywide, but not as readily globally. People who spoke the broad version, would have been understood easily, locally, but not necessarily more widely. In all dialect regions, about the same proportion would have spoken each of the three registers e.g. perhaps 10% would have spoken the formal register in all dialect regions. Maybe 30% would have spoken the general register and about 60% would have spoken the broad register. The register would have also been a social class/status marker as well. A great deal of this has broken down in all dialect regions of English now. On tv and radio you mostly hear the formal and general registers now when once you mostly heard the formal. In a radio/tv interview, the interviewer may have a formal/general register but be interviewing a person with a broad register (the poor-low status tend to suffer more). We were astonished after nine/eleven to hear the speech of New York firefighters. Much of it we couldn’t understand. I remember listening to some London bricklayers once. They too had about the same level of incomprehensibility for me as the NY firefighters. Both groups spoke the broad version of their dialects. Once again, your generalisations tend to be rather poor - as I have pointed out to you in the past. I am sure you will be pleased to receive this feedback being so good at receiving feedback etc. hmmm.

[maltnz]

My experience with restaurant customer service (at least here in Wellington) is that it has actually improved recently. Perhaps with the hospitality downturn from Covid, the businesses are trying harder to regain custom.

[reecethomas]

Americans speak clearly and slower than New Zealanders.
I am amazed at the super excellent service I get when shopping online in the USA.
love your channel, keep it up!
Hamilton, NZ

[traceypriest]

Very true about the way we speak. I think we speak fast and are lazy speakers (not intentionally) What do I mean? I think we try to use as few syllables as possible. For e.g. we say "battry" rather than "batt-ery" I am experimenting by recording myself reading, then listening to the playback. The first time I did it I was like "what did you just say?" It was an eye opener, I tell you! I have noticed these things: a) speaking too fast b) not allowing for natural pauses c) I sound boring at times (monotone.) Now I'm going to go back and redo the recordings again and try to improve upon what I noticed. I have been tonthe states and the overall response to me speaking was "pardon me?", "can you repeat that?", "can you say that slowly" Thanks for the video, it was very informative.

[maximgd]

Hi from Argentina. I think you're right about customer services (generally of course). Most of the times i think about their communication skills (manners, sympathy, i mean customer-focused conserns). I struggle quite a lot since english is not my native language 😅