A recent vowel change in New Zealand English is the raising of the DRESS vowel into the area of the FLEECE vowel – this means that 'best' sounds like 'beast' and 'bed' like 'bead'. Here University of Canterbury linguistics scholar Jen Hay explains this change to radio journalist Kim Hill, using her own name as an example, in this 2009 interview.
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Photograph by Julián
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 New Zealand Licence
Sound courtesy of Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa
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