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Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: wombat on March 30, 2008, 03:44:14 pm
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WELLINGTON (AFP) - A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he had been raped by a wombat and the experience had caused him to start speaking "Australian".
Arthur Cradock, a 48-year-old orchard worker from Motueka on South Island, rang police on February 11 to say he was being raped by the slow moving Australian marsupial at his home, The Nelson Mail reported.
He rang back soon afterwards to say he was withdrawing his complaint against the wombat, a court was told Wednesday.
"Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right you know," he told police in the second call.
Cradock pleaded guilty to using a phone for a fictitious purpose and was sentenced to 75 hours community work.
Prosecutors said alcohol played a large part in Cradock's life, although his defence lawyer said he was not drunk on the afternoon of the phone calls.
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What ARE the functional differences between speaking Australian English and New Zealand...ian English, anyway?
While I have met a number of Austrailian people in my time and gotten to know a few well enough to get a sense of their speech pattern, I don't know much for the Ki-to-the-Wi accent at all.
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...doc...paging doc...your expertise needed in Wild Card...
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I'm almost certain it's one of those things that you have to belong to one of the two countries to notice the difference but it is there.
Broadly the australian accent is more nasal and the new zealand accent has more muted vowels. A typical australian joke is to ask a kiwi to say 'giraffe and chips' which comes out something like fusch and chups. If you've seen 'Death Proof' the main stunt-woman in that had a fairly typical new zealand accent. Then there's the Maori new zealand accent which is subtly different again.
I'll youtube up some examples when I get home from work.
Wombats though, you have to watch those buggers.
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New Zealand news story on their accent. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ePwKYJcEOo&feature=related)
Here's a (violent but in this movie there isn't a lot else, particularly on youtube, just be happy I didn't pick the 'Make the man some eggs' scene) clip from Once were Warriors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB3C6KP6pGY) for a Maori accent which has a bit more of a south east asian flavour mixed in I'm guessing from the Polynesian heritage.
Oh, and one thing that all the aussie impressions on youtube reminded me of while I was looking. It's Aussie with a hard s, pronounce it Ozzie if you're not sure. 'Osee' with a soft s will gain you nothing but contempt.