Dialect Mystery Solved

New Zealanders speak an English dialect made up of quarter Scottish, one quarter Irish and 50 percent cockney, northern and west country English according to Scottish linguists. In a five-year study, mathematicians from New Zealand teamed with linguists from the UK and the US to determine why a unique dialect developed so quickly and uniformly across New Zealand. “Scots had quite a bit of influence. They are said to have had a particular role as teachers in New Zealand, so this would have had some effect on the children,” Edinburgh physicist Dr Richard Blythe told The Herald. It was previously thought New Zealand English was a derivative of Australian English.