Lost in translation

When away from home there's nothing like a slice of local TV entertainment in order to help quickly understand the language of the people. It's commonly thought that people speak English here so I wasn't expecting too much trouble communicating with the natives. But a few episodes of the jolly sports magazine show, The Crowd Goes Wild, and a few eye-opening heats of New Zealand's Got Talent and I am sometimes struggling to understand what on earth they're talking about. Wikipedia to the rescue and all is revealed. It is really like Afrikaans so all the brain has to do is switch to South African mode and things will be clearer. Just remember to switch most of the English vowel sounds and, hey presto, almost complete comprehension, even with fast speaking, fast joking TV heads.

So now I can claim pretty good skills in 4 languages, English, Finnish, Rubbish and New Zealandish (New Zealandian?). And by the end of this trip I hope to add at least Australian to the list. Well, I've heard it's pretty similar to what's spoken here except for some vowel sounds. It'd be nice to talk with my cousins in Tassie in their native tongue in April but I guess there might be some exceptional dialects down there, like Cornish in the UK.

My clock says 07.45 on this windy, clearing morning on the side of Mount Vic. Tyime tö git ip, eh!