In yesterday’s Dominion Post Watch Your Language column, Laurie Bauer talks about the demise of the sounded r in the kiwi accent. She depicts the slow demise of the voicing from the 17th century through to being inherited by New Zealand settlers.

The resulting spoken language introduces new world of homonyms:

We copy the standard English forms (but not the standard American forms) and pronounce “spar” the same way that we pronounce “spa”, “court” the same way that we pronounce “caught”, “dater” the same way that we pronounce “data” with no “r” sounds in either member of the pairs.

I found the article interesting enough to send an email to the author. I mentioned that in addition to her description, there is also a weird way that kiwis add an r sound in between vowel changes. She quickly replied, agreeing with me, but indicating that this behaviour is much more difficult to explain.