THE NEW ZEALAND LANGUAGE VOCABULARY
COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE
Everyday conversational language which is informal but widely understood (can include slang)
Gidday mate
SLANG
An even more informal language than colloquial and can be difficult to differentiate the two but:
- Usually not as widely understood and colloquialisms and used
by a specific group eg teenagers
- Usually “in” for a few years and then lost from
frequent usage eg groovey
CHANGE OF MEANING
Where the MEANINGS of words
change or the way in which they are used, changes (semantic change) eg dairy used to be a place to store milk near the cowshed
but is now the corner store.
INTERNAL BORROWING
Where words are borrowed from the native language eg iwi, whare, kai
EXTERNAL BORROWING
Where words are borrowed from other languages eg hamburgers, veranda, pizza
OBSOLETE WORDS
Words that were once commonly used and now hardly used eg pounds, shillings
NEOLOGISMS
Newly invented words which are often compound words eg woolshed, tarseal