So, I thought I might spice up my blog with something simple. Kiwi slang. New Zealand style.

(Note: Imma use LOADSA Malay words in this one. So yehh =D)

You know how we have our own colloquial language? (Just learnt this word in English =p) How we have “Dahsyat ah!” or “Gila bapeng!” or “Oii bongok!”? Kiwis have them too. It’s pretty interesting that how they use them is quite similar to how we use ours. And I gotta say that they use the words all the time. Just like we, Malaysians do. To make things easier, I’ll just put a list of the slangs below. =) Owh, urm, cheq guna bahasa Penang naa. Kalau tak paham, tok sah dok malu-malu nak tanya. =D

M-Malaysians

K-Kiwis

M: Woi, apa cer?

K: G’dday mate!

M: Hang jumpa Dan Carter?? Dahsyat aahhh!

K: You met Dan Carter? Far out!

M: Hang dapat buat Maths? Gila ahh!

K: You’ve done Maths? Crazy!

M: Kertas English, ka?

K: English Paper, ey?

M: Oii bongok!

K: Hey egg!

M: Terima kasih / sama-sama.

K: Cheers bro!

(Though ‘Thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ are also used)

See how similar they are to our Malaysian slang?? Sama gila kan?? These are the words that I’ve encountered so far. I shall update you guys if I have more. =D

I do believe that my English level is pretty good where I could both understand and speak the language pretty fluently but when I first came here, the accent was alien to me. I couldn’t understand a word what the Kiwis were saying. They had a very strong accent but after having to only talk and listen to Kiwi English, I could finally fully understand the accent after the first 6 weeks living in NZ. LOL. Though I still get confused with some of the words. No offence or anything, Kiwi’s accent is just to cool for Malaysians like me. =)

Bunyi ‘e’ depa macam how we read kita punya ‘i’. You’ll get the pronunciation right if you read them in Bahasa. So, for example, the word ‘desk’ is pronounced as ‘disk’, ‘seven’ as ‘siven’, ‘ten’ as ‘tin’. And a whole lot more. Well, at least that’s how I heard them. I couldn’t differentiate the words initially.

And words like ‘girlfriend’, I dengaq macam ‘gyulfrind’, ‘learners’ and ‘luerners’, ‘whatever’ as ‘wot-iva’, and ‘cool’ as ‘kewl’. But you’ll get used to them after living here for more than 5 months now =p. Hehe. Here was what happened in my 2^nd English class. =S (It’s written as how I hear it. You’ll understand it if you read it in Bahasa. =S)

Madam: Okay class, roit an issay about the sitting from the novel.

Me: Huh? Apakah? Pasai apa kena tulih essay about sittings (as in kedudukan?) *Thinks*

Madam: Sow, wiy have the physical and social sittings such as....... (Goes on)

Me: Owh, tulih an essay about the SETTINGS ghupanya. Cehh. *slaps head*

And the joke is, they had trouble understanding MY accent. They had always mistaken my alphabet ‘a’ with ‘e’. Somehow, I gotta work on that. =.=’ And for those of you whom I speak English with, knows that I don’t have a very strong Malay accent. So yehh.

The conclusion is, we just rock that we couldn’t understand each other’s accent. LOL.