The Origins of New Zealand Speech: The Limits of Recovering Historical Information from Written Records

New Zealand English has evolved in the past 150 years, at a time when it is possible to find both written and spoken evidence of its development. This paper takes evidence gained from an analysis of written comments on early New Zealand English and compares this with data taken from ananalysis of spoken New Zealand English obtained from recordings collected in the 1940s of old New Zealanders born in the 1850s-1890s — the period when the New Zealand accent was developing. By putting the written data beside the spoken data it is now possible to assess the accuracy of written records as a basis for the reconstruction of the earliest form of New Zealand English.