Beautiful Kiwi Vocals

I love the sound of a good Kiwi accent. It reminds me of home. Some how it reminds me of the ocean. It's the cultural talk of a nation of people who share a few small mountainous strips of land somewhere far, far away from the 'rest of the world'. It changes from region to region - which is quite interesting to behold, Te reo Maori seems to have permeated the North Island dialect far more notably than down here in the country South. The West Coast of the South have a definite twang. Scots lingers in the south of the South. But this is some thing new... Apparently we're loosing a few vowels and constanants here and there. Yes indeed, our pronounciation is oozing into something else - how exciting! If it's edgy, well then that makes sense, we are an edgy bunch. We live on the edge of a vast ocean and our ancestors (or possibly we) took a huge leap of faith to a) get here and b) set up home. Here we are, at the 'bottom' of the blue Pacific and our accent is morphing quietly over time, as we grow and change and move with the masses of people who come and go. So we don't sound like Americans? Great! So we don't sound like the English anymore? How on earth could we expect to, given that we live on the opposite side of the planet and many English came here determined to begin a new life, and leave the class system behind? Who we are is people of Aotearoa and I'm proud of how we sound and what our language reflects.