NZWORDS an Initial Study of the Rural NZ English Broken In
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On First Looking Into Kiwi Ruralspeak . Dianne Bardsley NZWORDS An initial study of the rural NZ English broken in. Bush can be broken with pakihis lexicon could easily reinforce perceptions of but also broken in to serve as bush farms. A the ‘Kiwi’ as a resourceful DIY improviser and break should be back-fenced, and stock can initiator who has evolved independent easily break while being mobbed. For soil approaches to language and its use, as well as conservation purposes, a break may have to be to farming practice. Since 1850 New Zealand planted. A break may be punished with a farmers have adapted existing terms and flogger. The boy will have to go and move the coined words in the fields of animal break after milking. Wool from poorly husbandry, plant and soil science, stud nourished sheep can contain a localised breeding, dog trialling, and every other aspect weakness, a break or two. A break can occur in of farming life. Borrowings from Maori a sheep’s skin if it has been on rough pasture. or from the ‘homeland’ have been Clean hills are different from clean sheep compounded, converted, and collocated, and camps; clean sheep are quite different from AUGUST 2001 with a high level of specificity, multi-lexical cleanskin cattle. Open country, with several NUMBER 5 units have been a significant feature. meanings, can also be broken. Hooks are Although words have been generated and spurs on a musterer’s boots, they are tusks on PUBLISHED ANNUALLY adapted with what could be described a liberal wild pigs, and they are enclosures on dog-trial and innovative agrarian air, such processes are courses. A shepherd has to be careful not to perhaps merely typical of frontier societies cut in too quickly while mobbing or taking a EDITORIAL throughout the English-speaking world. More cut; lambs will cut when they are not supposed As long ago as 1965 the editors of the original significant, perhaps, is that New Zealand to be cut out; the shed is cut out; and the Penguin English Dictionary were expressing the ruralspeak has been generated by a very small shearing is cut out at cut-out time. If cut-out’s view that ‘One can no longer attempt to population in quite heterogeneous early, one sits down and waits for the brown impose nationalistic divisions on a language conditions. boots to arrive with the cheque book. One whose divergent branches are in such Naturally, the rural lexicon shows close runs a dog at the dog-trials, has run cattle that frequent and intimate contact’. Certainly the association with the physical environment: one might occasionally run on a run-off frequency and intimacy of such contact have sunny or clean faces, guts, river flats, chutes (where one has to watch the run-off after only intensified in the intervening decades. and shingle-slides, pakihis, wiwis, monkey rain), achieves a runout at the trials, and can The infiltration of North American usage into scrub, gumlands, tomos, razorbacks, and have a run-out crop or paddock. Sheep can be other English varieties has become more and nor’west arches have specific rural application run in, run through or run out by the whare more marked, and in this part of the world and significance. In the city, a double-decker is boys while the boss runs into town in the ute. Australian influence on NZE is a continuing possibly an ice cream or a bus; in the country, On a farm it is common to refer not in phenomenon. (Should I have been surprised it is a stock truck with two decks, or a sheep general terms to ‘the tractor’, the sheep, or to overhear a Kiwi-accented airline passenger with two seasons’ growth of wool. In the urban even the woolshed as a townie might. It’s talking about his doona recently? Or to be world, police and delivery vans do their beats, specifically the Fergie or the steel-wheel, the confronted with ‘Enrolment rorts ruled out’ whereas out on the hills musterers and two-tooths or the culls, the shed, the boards, as headline in my morning paper?) shepherds have beats with a different purpose, or the battens. Other examples of specificity And yet regional and national distinctiveness and camp weeds have a life of their own. A include the different types of muster: weaning in words and meanings remains strong, much finisher in a rural sense can be a fattener muster, a delivery muster, an autumn muster, of it inherently resistant to levelling and cross- farmer or a crop of lucerne. Making a break a crutching muster, a dipping muster, a fertilising processes because of unique and dozing off are constructive pasture helimuster. application to a particular English-speaking management activities on farms. Cobalt deficiency disease is known environment. The NZDC and our New There are several specialist rural contexts, variously as bush sickness, bush disease, the Zealand dictionaries would have little reason including the mustering lexicon (discussed skinnies, Hope disease, Mairoa dopiness, to exist if this were not so. Moreover, such more fully below), the language of the dog Tauranga sickness/disease, or Morton Mains convergence of English vocabularies as is trials, of saleyards, of the woolshed, of the Disease. Wild pigs can be bush pigs, maori occurring seems to be more than countered cowshed, of stock stud breeding, and of pigs, bush pork, Captain Cookers, scofflers, by additional divergence as social and hunting, all of which show considerable scufflers, scoofters or scooflers, opera institutional changes require and generate yet variation, synonymy, and local colloquialism. singers, porkers, tuskers, taraianas, Irish more locally specific coinages. Some of the numerous phrasal verbs, verbal merinos, grunters, razorbacks or bristle-backs. In different ways the two main articles in this nouns, acronyms, eponyms, and the POSSESSION IS issue tap into rich seams of robustly distinctive application of trade names are included in the NINE-TENTHS . New Zealand usage of the kind that could discussion here. Although specificity is a easily escape the superficial inquiry. Dianne feature, many lexemes such as the borrowings An early borrowing from the Maori was pikau, Bardsley presents a generous and colourful konaki and pikau have been applied loosely and this survival term has been applied to selection of material collected in her current with a range of meanings. Rural New Zealand several objects. Makeshift backpacks were delvings into the (presently under-recorded) English is a fascinating field of study, known as pikaus, split sacks were pikaus, and rural lexicon, and the editor (excusably, one reflecting quite distinct stages and foci in our saddlebags were pikaus in rural New Zealand hopes) is doggedly parochial in his quest for a agricultural and pastoral development. English. A konaki was any sledge pulled by particular set of provincialisms. As well readers CAN A BREAK BE BROKEN? bullock or horse, but in some areas was will find here our regular Director’s offering, specifically one with runners and rear wheels, details of the Centre’s Unit in ruralspeak might be a farm, a farm used for hill country work. Tutu is an early new website, and not implement, or a stock transporter. Woollies borrowing adapted according to the region in least a young person’s might be sheep in general or unshorn sheep which it has been used. Both in the North and interesting take on or, more specifically, those that have missed at the South Islands stock became tutu-ed or a sometimes gaffe- least one season’s shearing. Strip refers to the tuted, but in the South, where vegetation for producing Kiwiism. airstrip, the dog dosing strip or what one does fuel was in short supply, rural residents went Tony Deverson before putting the cups on. Land is considered tutu-ing for the plant roots that burned well. Editor, NZWords broken when it is steep and contains gullies In other parts, tutu-ing consisted of cutting the Associate Director, and guts. It is broken when it has been ‘tamed’ poisonous plants and leaving the roots to rot. NZDC from native covering to pasture. It is also Mokihi was corrupted to moggy or a moki, and described as unbroken in both senses. Land it was often made of korade (korari). Tawhini, can be broken up (subdivided) as well as bidibid(i), and matagouri are well-known THE NEW ZEALAND DICTIONARY CENTRE A joint project between VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF 1 WELLINGTON and OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 separates the milk, and the station school of a shingle-slip or a bluffy face. If a whare boy might have its own saddle room. (single shepherd) is really lucky, he might gain corruptions surviving in the rural lexicon. DOING A DOG JOB the bottom wire of the fence (marry the Collocations of Maori botanical lexemes farmer’s daughter). If he’s unlucky, his include manuka blight, old man manuka, rimu High country shepherds and musterers do presence might be required pearldiving at the dropper, and akeake monkey, while whare not call themselves shepherds and musterers; dagpickers’ ball (a wet-weather job under the appears to have the greatest range of they are dog men, hillmen, tussock-jumpers, woolshed, sorting wool from dags). After meanings and collocations in the rural world scree-scramblers, lizards, dog-wallopers, doing a dog job, a tussock-jumper might begin (whare boy, sod whare, back whare, whare sandy-hookers, or mutton-punchers, and while to feel symptoms typical of a matagouri boss, etc.) they are mustering they are doing a dog job, mermaid and will want to head down country Pakihi is a borrowing that has undergone taking up the burnt chops, or bringing in the and get a job with a mudflat cockie.