Kia Ora: Do you speak Kiwi?

Samuel Blackmer, a writer and editor at The Metropolitan, the student-produced newspaper at Metropolitan State College of Denver, is spending the year studying journalism in New Zealand. Click here to follow his Kia Ora blog. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever suffered culture shock, though if I had it would have to have been about my third week in boot camp. The Army is definitely a different culture, though I don’t know if getting discouraged that you keep getting shouted at and made to do pushups can be considered culture shock. . . .  But I have known many people to get culture shock, and frequently it involves the little things like food or language. And while in both America and New Zealand the official language is English, there are times when this isn’t exactly clear.

I have never missed American food, though I think I’m unique in this regard. While serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I knew several people who spent long hours trying to decide what would be the first meal they would have when back in the States, and often the meal they were craving consisted of their favorite fast food joint. I think I was too busy trying to get ahold of local food to realize I missed the food back home.

But the language aspect I can understand. It is Maori (pronounced marry but with a long ‘a’ like in Mars) language week here in New Zealand, and a few phrases have been adopted in New Zealand English. For instance, kia ora (yes, the title of my blog) is a Maori greeting. It quite literally means “good health,” but when translated by my bus driver in Rotorua into 55 different languages, I learned it has far more meaning than just “good health.” Unfortunately, I’m not picking up a lot of Maori. The only people who speak a lot of Maori are the Maori, and while there are plenty of them around, most speak English when not talking to other Maori. But to be sure, it is a living language, and it’s having some influence in New Zealand.

As for the real differences in our two languages, most come from New Zealand having been British for so much longer than the States were. Not having been to Great Britain, I can’t say for sure how much of the jargon is Kiwi and how much is British, but it certainly isn’t American – as I’m often reminded by my friend Samantha and her girls. American can hardly be considered a language in polite company.

If you go into a produce shop in New Zealand and ask for a kiwi, they will look at you as if you’ve lost your mind. Here, the only kiwi are the people and the bird, neither of which do they look kindly upon people eating. The bird is protected and the people . . . well, it just isn’t polite to go around eating people. Some Kiwis are kind enough to point out the fruit are called “kiwi fruit” and you’ll find them close to the capsicum (what we call peppers), but most Kiwi just look at you as if you are speaking American.

Once you have your kiwi fruit, you can put them in the boot of your car. They don’t use trunks here, only boots. And should your car not start, you might have to lift the bonnet – no, not the hood – and see if you can figure out why your car won’t start. But maybe you don’t have a car, maybe you have a ute, short for utility. In the States, we call these pickup trucks, but here, you’d only call them that if you were looking to get blank stares from Kiwis.

If you live in a flat, what we would call an apartment, you can take your kiwi fruit to your flat using the lift, or elevator for those not versed in Kiwi. To get to your flat, you might take a motorway. Of course there are no interstate highways; you’d need states to have an interstate. You’d also take the motorway if you were going to the beach, but be sure to bring your jandals, what we call flip flops, and togs, what we call swimming trunks. You might bring along a lunch in your bum bag. Never – ever – say fanny pack. You’ll be considered very rude talking about fanny packs, even in less than polite company.

Of course, these are all different words for the same thing. The troubling moments come when we come to the same words or similar words and you still get blank stares. Auckland is pronounced “Oakland.” When I try to explain that Oakland is a city not far from San Francisco and Auckland is the cities of sails in New Zealand, I always get into arguments. They put an “i” in their aluminum, but they do pronounce the “i” so it looks and sounds like aluminium. And of course there are Japanese cars. I’m not even sure how to go about explaining the differences in pronunciation, so I won’t, but rest assured, if you ask what they think of the latest Mitsubishi, you will get a blank stare.

Really, I don’t imagine it will be long before people will need American-Kiwi dictionaries if they are going to travel between the two countries. As for me, I’ll keep my eyes out for kiwi while hanging out with my Kiwi friends all the while enjoying my kiwi fruit — and until next week, Kia Ora!