40 Hour Famine

The World Vision 40 Hour Famine is a fundraising event that started in 1975 as an action towards helping famine-stricken Ethiopia as 10,000 New Zealanders banded together to raise $265,000.00.

A person or a group can participate registering at the site and by doing, or doing without, something they will find difficult to do for 40 hours. Famine participants then ask people to sponsor them for this endeavour. You can also become a volunteer for the event itself and help out in promotions and follow-up with collecting funds after the Famine weekend.

Proceeds for this year's 40 Hour Famine event will go towards providing nourishment to the impoverished children of Bangladesh, and will happen on 22-24 May 09.

If you are looking to support a Famine participant, may I suggest supporting Rev. Robin Palmer, who will do his custom famine for 40 hours.

40 Hour Famine needs all the help it can get to raise awareness and funds so spread the word and support the Famine participants for the sake of the impoverished children of Bangladesh.

Kiwi speak

The Kiwis are making spoken English all their own by mixing it up and blending their own unique flavour into it. To the untrained ear, Kiwis may sound very much like Aussies but you will eventually notice the differences. Even the British influence over spoken English is being changed to something uniquely New Zealand.

This is something that can be quite difficult to fathom for newcomers. Some TV documentaries and papers have even made special reports about this evolution. The NZ Herald, for example, made a couple of such articles:
I'll just have me fush and chups and then I'm off to bid
'Colonial twang' part of our identity
New Zilunders and proud of it

There were, indeed, more than a couple of times when we found ourselves confused, and a lengthy explanation had to be done for us to understand (we thought we heard "text" but it was "tax", for example) so it will really take some time to adjust. There are, however, ways for us to adjust our ears to the Kiwi English.

Listen to the radio.

Thank goodness for the Internet radio! Now you can get your fill of Kiwi English through the internet. Try the following for size: RadioNZ and MoreFM. I like MoreFM because the buses are tuned in to this station more often than not, and they play 80s music! Plus they have a lot of interaction with callers and so you get that local flavour.

There is also a list of radio stations in Wikipedia you can choose from.

Watch the TV.
Of course this is no problemo if you are already here in New Zealand. But you can also try out some soap operas that are being broadcast in the internet. Some of the shows on Free-to-air channels are re-broadcast on the internet through tvnz on demand.
One such show is Shortland Street, a soap opera and drama television that started airing in 1992 and is still going strong!
A fun way to learn about the local culture and listen to some Kiwi speak is bro'Town, a cartoon series which focuses on the life and times of five Auckland teenagers. This is shown on TV3 on Sundays at 8PM. Episodes are also available in the Net but are, however, available only to New Zealand viewers.

Hmmm... I haven't tried searching for New Zealand podcasts yet but there must be some out there. These are just some ideas to get you started with familiarizing yourself with Kiwi speak. It can get confusing, but it's all part of the learning process.

Color = colour?

The Philippines is largely an English-speaking nation. English is the medium of instruction in the vast majority of schools (shall I say, all?), and with the majority also able to speak Filipino (previously called Tagalog) plus a third, local dialect, I'd say we are pretty much able in terms of linguistics. So moving to an English-speaking country will be no hassle at all! Right?

Well... that's a yes and a no. Yes because our accent is generally understandable. Of the many people I have talked to, I have only encountered two so far who have asked me to repeat what I have just said more than once in a conversation. We can carry on a pretty decent discussion with them. There have also been a couple who correctly identified me as Filipino based on my accent (and I didn't realize we have a unique accent!) because they have Filipino friends.

The No part is due to what I call "localized English". In the writing aspect, we have to learn how to spell some words the British way. I learned about this because writing is a huge part of my work and one time, I was corrected on 'enrollment' which is now 'enrolment'. Sometimes it's just a case of a letter less, or a letter more ('Color' is now 'colour'), but it can also get tricky ('maneuver' is now 'manoeuvre'). But we can generally get away with our American English spelling because, phonetics-wise, the sound is the same. So if they read our correspondence, they will understand what the word is, only spelled differently. It will help a lot of course if we learn how to spell words as they do. When in Rome? :-)

And then, there are words that completely replace terms we are familiar with. A 'baby carriage', for example, is a 'pram', 'gasoline' is 'petrol', 'restroom' is 'loo' or 'water closet (WC)'.

That said, we can pretty much get along rather well with the Kiwis. Here in Wellington where cultural diversity is rich, many terms we use (such as bathroom or restroom) is generally recognized.

To research about this topic on the web, simply Google "American English vs British English" and this will lead you to a number of resources. Here are some to get you started:
Susan Jones' Common Words
English Club's English and American English Spelling

On my next post: resources to listen and learn about the Kiwi accent