New kiwi dialect devised for film

School of Linguistics and International Languages staff have devised an other-worldly sounding dialect for a film that explores an imaginary time in New Zealand’s future.

Filming for the movie, Existence, begins later this month and the dialect devised by linguists Peter Petrucci and Martin Paviour-Smith, both from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is set to take a lead role.

Actors Matthew Sunderland and Aaron Jackson will speak the dialect after receiving coaching by New Zealand-born Dr Paviour-Smith, with advice from Dr Petrucci.

“Not being a natural-born New Zealander myself, we decided that Martin be the one to manipulate the dialect to what a New Zealander might sound like in the future,” Dr Petrucci says.

“When we devised the dialect we envisaged certain changes in the consonants and vowels along with some interesting new words. Matthew and Aaron will be speaking in English but in variety distinct from what we are used to.”

Dr Petrucci says some characters in the film have been isolated from the main population for some generations, making the emergence of a new dialect completely plausible.

“After all, it’s fair to say, New Zealand’s geographical isolation over time has been partly responsible for the development of the spoken language that New Zealanders use today.”

Dr Petrucci, whose research looks at sociolinguistic aspects of cinematic discourse – or how movies show variations in the way people speak, was approached by the film’s director Juliet Bergh to create “ a distinct dialect for the character but with limited dialogue”.

Mr Sunderland, who starred in Out of the Blue, a film about the Aramoana shootings, and Mr Jackson are joined in the cast by Loren Taylor who starred in Eagle vs Shark and Gareth Reeves from the movie Tracker.

The movie was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission’s low budget Escalator initiative.

The following sound files provide brief examples of dialect for five distinct phrasings with their translations listed below. Each phrase is repeated.

Listen to the phrases