A YWS member bonding activity

Whee! I am the first representative of my own little corner of the globe - New Zealand! I once saw this ad from overseas about NZ on "The Funniest Advertisements You've Never Seen". People seem to think we're all sheep farmers - even in the cities! - and that we all wear those stupid black gumboots up to our knees and black singlets, love rugby and have big floppy hats. [looks thoroughly bewildered by this] First of all, let me tell y'all (I have picked up odd bits of American accents from TV and the net LMAO and "y'all" seems to have stuck, for some reason) that I do not farm sheep. Nor have I ever. Well, unless you count that time where I was looking after that lamb for a friend...and of course, there is the pony in the back yard...and the cows next door...Be this as it may, however, I have never farmed an animal in my life. And while I may occasionally wear gumboots, they are NOT black and dont reach my knees. And I never wear black singlets. Although I have been known to wear a floppy hat from time to time. Contrary to most expectations, I HATE rugby (our so-called "national sport"). Of course, I'm half-Brit (which does sound disturbingly like half-WIT, I admit...and that rhymes...), and have always been partial to that side of my heritage (which also includes Russian, oddly enough) so that may explain it.
I mix my spellings, courtesy of the fact that NZ writers cant write worth cow dung (no offense to the good ones, but they're few on the ground in my humble opinion) so most books here are imported from the States or the UK. Sometimes, if I feel lazy, I drop that extra m and e...but half the time people tell me I'm spelling wrong now (although I was a great speller until I started forgetting that I was a NZer and wrote like an American, which was about the time that we got the computer - LMAO!). Its no wonder I have problems with things like practice and practise hehe.

Éloeré wrote:

I've been to Australia before (stayed mostly in Cairns, but had the chance to visit Alice Springs and Sydney as well) and the first thing that I noticed as I stepped off the plane was how American everyone talked, lol. I mean, there was some accent to be sure, but no one I met talked like Crocodile Dundee or had the stereotypical thick Australian accent. Mate was thrown around a lot, but I never heard "G'day" except for the "Say G'day" phone card that I had.

Were you terrible disapointed we didn't turn out like the movie? Because, movies AREN'T real. And let's face it, how many times do you meet someone exactly like the steryo type. OF COURSE crocodile dundee was exagerate (well, SOME people are like that, but that's still not common). That's why it's FUNNY here. But there are some people who do talk like that, I've got a kid in my class who's always talking like that, I haven't yet figured out if he's doing it on purpose or not...

And Firestarter's right, TECHNECALLY, you took the m and the e off, not us adding them.

I was surprised, not disappointed. Actually, surprised is too strong of a word for my reaction. It was more like "Oh" and that was that.

Er...Im macedonian, sooo like we don't count nowhere right? lol But I do cherish the british style of speaking and writing (I practiced my accent for 6 months )
So chaps, anyone willing to join me for a cup of earl gray tea? *suuuuurp* Ah....William, *whistles* come here boy!

But I don't know, because the US is, like, the entertainment capital of the world, so we're exporting more than importing.
Speaking of which, I've kind of wondered if other countries watch American award shows?(I don't mean to sound stuck-up or anything, I know a lot of countries have their own)

Nope. I hate award shows, don't even watch our own ones here.

Can you try?

Describe an accent, now that's hard! It's hard because most people take their accent as the norm and base others accents off theirs. I really can't! I don't know where to start!

Well err....you know a posh england accent? Mancunian accent is totally the opposite of that. We tend to pronounce words with "er" on the end like "aa" e.g. some mancunians prononcing manchester would say "manchesta". That's a bad example, actually. I don't think I talk anything like that.

I guess we just don't pronounce things very well. If I compare my speech to someone from America, our pronounciation is a lot less clear.

When I listen to our national news, its a bit of a joke to make fun of the way the newsanchors said things, because some of them were from 'The East'. We have a tendency to smooth syllables together or even omit sounds, whereas the newspeople would pronounce that 'a' or exagerate that syllable...I can't think of any words at the moment, but I used to have a mental list. Mostly we speak alike.

A.O. Avalon wrote:very true, Americans are a lot of b******* .

poms = brits?

well im not american but still thinkin that isnt v nice...

Nope. I hate award shows, don't even watch our own ones here.

Me neither! soooooooooooo BORING!

I love award shows! britney, paris hilton, lindsey lohan, hilary duff, trl, etc. etc. etc.

i speak American but i prefer many of the 'English' spellings of words... I just got marked off on an english assignment for that reason...

Come to think of it, there are some people around here with a variation of the 'Texas Twang'. I'm one of the few who say 'wash' the way its spelled. Many people say 'Warsh'. I do, too sometimes, if I'm speaking to them. The people of my dad's generation says things like that.

I guess I speak American but I spell English. Recently, I've read a lot of British fiction particularly fanfiction. So, I find myself spelling gray with an e instead of an a like my English teacher would want me to. I'd rather spell it the English way. It looks much better, more sophisticated.

Perra wrote:

A.O. Avalon wrote:very true, Americans are a lot of b******* .

Hey!! I resent that!

Actually, to quote my dad,

Hey, I represent that remark.

Err, I think it is just in the rebelious nature of Americans to modify stuff just to spite the originators. My opinion (not my history book's) is that American's were just flat-out tired of being British, so they created some reasons and split off. Can't say I blame 'em. Sorry guys, but I can relate to them not wanting to be ruled by someone who lives across the sea.
I get angered by the thought of being regulated by some fat-@%& city-slicker who lives half the country away and has never seen my lifestyle. Why should someone who's lived their entire life in New York decide if little po-dunk Idaho can build dams to irrigate their crops?

*sigh*Okay, when I said "Most Americans are b*******" I didn't mean we're all mean, nasty people who deserve to be called foul names. Rather I meant was "Not genuine; spurious" because Americans (especially those of European descent) derive much of their culture from other sources and change it around to make it their own, like say the English language.

Ok, I live in NZ too, at the top of the South Island. I live in a small town, in a smallish bay that you can only get to by going over a stupid hill (Its called the Takaka hill but its actually a mountain as its high enough.) Even though I live in the country I do not llive on a farm (unless you count having a horse and its foal as being a farm) I have lived on a farm for nearly the whole of 2001, and the best part of it was rounding up the cattle bareback on a horse.

I do like rugby, especially when the ABs do well but I'm not obssessed with it or anything like some people are a I like netball better (although I think its unfair that the Silver Ferns don't get paid and the ABs were arguing about how much they should get if they won the World Cup)

Yes most books are imported, but there are some good NZ writers such as Maurice Gee, Owen Marshall, Janet Frame and others. Yes, some NZ writers are quite bad, but thats probably the same in every country, its just that mostly only the good books from other countries are imported to NZ so we only get to read the good stuff.

I've always spelt colour like this but I was told once to spell it color, but I don't paricularly like it that way so I still spell it colour.

I think any country that accepts Sci-Fi and Romance as genres has bad writers. (Which is not to insult any Romance or Sci-fi writers out there, I'm a Sci-fi-er myself, they're just two genres that have become cliched-- If you can offer a unique voice more power to you.)

What, pray tell, is "netball"?