Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

You've got to admit it... the real kiwi accent (as spoken by dodgy New Zealanders who live in the suburbs or out in the country) is pretty rank... ya know, kinda naff... but in a 'good to make fun of' kind of way ;-)

Aussie talkshow king, Rove McManus has spent his last Rove Live show taking the "puss" out of kiwis, and trying to pronounce a range of Maori placenames and phrases.

In his first lesson he learnt that in Maori, they pronounce "Whaka" as "Far-Car"... This of course way highly amusing, and he couldn't quite believe it was really true... "Far-Car?! That can't be right, surely... Far-Car?! - Are we still on the air?!"

He challenged kiwi tv legend, TV3's John Campbell to drop the phrase into conversation on air... Johnboy took up the challenge, and featured an interview with Rove on his new show, Campbell Live this evening... discussing what Aussie's really think of kiwis and their strange accent.

* Campbell Live website
* Rove Live website

John pointed out this great piece from Aussie paper, The Age, about Prince Charles' recent visit to NZ...

Would Prime Minister Hillin Cluck please control that Kiwi rabble! Poor Prince Chucky, still glowing after the Aussie hospitality he enjoyed on the more civilised side of the Tasman, was greeted yesterday by this underclad creature in Wellington, her sorry torso inscribed with the odd message: "Get your colonists' shame off my breasts".

This followed a report from our man in Dunedin where the rozzers rushed to a bus shelter on the royal motorcade route to tackle a chap who had bared his lower regions, a traditional Maori insult (and not looked upon too kindly elsewhere in the world).

Incredibly, after investigation, a police officer announced that it "just seems coincidental"! Just one of your random New Zealand bus-shelter trouser incidents, it appears.

Gotta love their phonetically-correct-spelling of New Zealand's Prime Minister - isn't it said when people can't even pronounce their own names?...


When I was at summer camp at Lake Greeley in the United States last year, there was another kiwi counselor who kept insisting his name was "Crick"... Crick?! Who TF calls their kid "Crick"?!

It took a while for Moray-the-Scottish-Guy to figure out his name was actually "Craig" ;-) The best trick was getting the kids to ask him to count to ten... (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Sux , Seevin, 8, 9, Tin)... Mighty Hilarious in an immature kindof way!

However, he didn't actually have the worst "Nu Zahlund ex-cent"... there was a girl called Laura who told her campers she came from Rotorua, but she actually lives close to the Thermal Village "Whakarewarewa", which sounds much funnier! (Far-Car-Ray-Wah-Ray-Wah) ;-)

She would spend hours on the phone talking to her friends and family back home about "eating fush in chups", how much she enjoyed 'The Bourne Supremacy' (It was a fentestic, eck-shun-pecked fluck, apparently), how she'd hut her hid on a disk, and how her alarm woke her up at sux toe sux in the mornung...

Admittedly, not all kiwis talk like Lyn-of-Tawa (NZers will understand), but there does seem to be quite a few who still think the capital city is "Wullingtun" (Wellington)... they like to drink "Muwk" (Milk), and think "Jiff Woowsun" (Jeff Wilson) is a great Cricket and Rugby player.