Guest Post
by Meredith Shayne
Aussie & NZ Accents
You’d think, because Australia and New Zealand are so close together, that their speech would be quite similar. It is, in some ways. But in other ways it’s really not. Take the slang, for instance; in Cutting Out, Lachie and Shane have a couple of discussions, joking around about the different slang terms used by New Zealanders (Lachie) and Australians (Shane). Some slang is almost the same: to describe someone going into the middle of nowhere, Australians say “he’s gone to woop woop”, whereas Kiwis say “he’s gone to the wop wops”. Some slang is quite different: an American cooler is an “esky” to an Australian, and a “chilly bin” to a Kiwi.
When I moved from Australia to New Zealand almost ten years ago, a lot of people joked that I would lose my accent, but that’s not what happens, not when you move somewhere as an adult; at least, it didn’t happen to me. What happened was that my slang started to change. It’s not on purpose, necessarily, mostly it’s just that you tend to pick up words from the people around you, in a very organic way. So while I still call an esky an esky, and I enjoy using the word “thongs” and watching people think I’m talking about underwear (I’m really not!), I do call the corner shop a dairy. I’ve admitted defeat there. I’ve also stopped using some phrases that I used to use all the time. The phrase “you’ve got Buckley’s” (which means “you’ve got no chance”) is no longer part of my vocabulary when I’m in New Zealand, to avoid the blank stares of confusion I get when I use it. The opposite is true as well; once, one of my friends asked me to pass her a Vivid. I didn’t, because I had no idea what a Vivid was. Now they just ask me to pass them a marker pen!
As I mentioned before, like Shane in Cutting Out, my accent is still 100% True Blue Aussie. It marks me as an interesting topic of conversation as soon as I open my mouth (“Oh, so you’re Australian? How long have you been here?”), and if I ring up a phone company to discuss calling plans, I automatically get offered a package which includes calls to Australia. Sometimes my Kiwi friends like to test out how good a foreign person’s ear is; if we’re around someone from the US or UK, I’ll often find myself having to repeat a typical sentence after a Kiwi has said it because the Kiwi has asked our visitor, “So, can you tell the difference between our accents?” Asking me to repeat iconic Australian movie lines also apparently never gets old.
Below are two videos which demonstrate perfectly the differences between the Australian and New Zealand accents, so see if you can hear them; maybe the next time someone asks you, “So, can you tell the difference between our accents?” you’ll have no trouble at all identifying them.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj05ICDL6Cc
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab_MLnr1Q4I
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Book Details: Novel
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Release Date: October 11, 2014
Blurb
A twenty-year veteran of the shearing shed, Aussie Shane Cooper loves his job, and the home he’s made for himself in New Zealand. If he’s a little lonely, he’s got good mates to keep his spirits up. When a hot, cocky young shearer named Lachlan Moore catches his eye at a competition, he’s content to look but not touch, knowing the young man is out of his league.
Lachie wouldn’t mind a piece of Shane, but the gorgeous gun shearer from Australia is soon forgotten when the Christchurch earthquake hits, and tragedy strikes Lachie’s family. Lachie deals with it the best he can, cutting himself off from all he knows. A year later and he’s back in the shearing shed, out of practice and lacking confidence. That Shane’s there to watch him flounder doesn’t help his nerves.
As Lachlan struggles to re-acclimatise, Shane can’t resist giving him a hand to get back on his feet. As they move from friends to something more, Shane finds himself wanting to know everything he can about Lachie. But Lachie’s got secrets he desperately wants to keep, and when things come to a head, those secrets might just mean the end of them before they’ve truly begun.
Buy Links
The e-book is available for sale for $5.99 via the BDP Digital Shop
and other online booksellers.
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU
Apple iBooks | All Romance
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About the Author:
A scientist in a past life, these days Meredith Shayne mainly uses her scientific training to poke holes in television pseudoscience. Originally from Australia, she moved to New Zealand to start a new life a few years ago and hasn't regretted it for one minute, even if she frequently wishes that the New Zealand weather was a little better; if she's forced, she'll admit that the refreshing lack of animals that can kill you in New Zealand makes up for a little rain.
Meredith travels a lot, so much so that she has developed a shameful love of airplane food and knows her passport number by heart. When she is at home, she enjoys baking, horrible music from the 1980s, reality television, and gloating any time Australia thrashes the living daylights out of New Zealand on the sporting field.
Find Meredith at her online:
www.meredithshayne.com
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23280855-cutting-out
http://booklikes.com/cutting-out-meredith-shayne/book,12925937
www.bottomdrawerpublications.net
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Release & Blog Tour Giveaway
Paperback copy of Cutting Out
$10 BDP voucher
3 x Cutting Out e-books
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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