New Zealand 'anythink'

[Mike MacMahon]

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I don't think there's been any comment so far on a 19th-century description
of the use of the 'anythin' and 'anythink' pronunciations in Australia and
NZ.
 
Buried deep inside Ellis's 'On Early English Pronunciation' (Vol V, 1889),
are some remarks on Australasian speech, to complement what he has to say
about Cockney.  Pages 236-248 are worth looking at.
 
His information came from Samuel McBurney, a native Scot, who had worked in
Australia and who appears to have been a good phonetician; McBurney carried
out an 11-month study of Australasian pronunciation between January and
November 1887.  The results (or at least a resume of them) were
subsequently transmitted to Ellis.
 
The word 'anything' is specifically mentioned -- see Ellis page 247,
right-hand column.  It seems that the 'anythink' pronunciation (Ellis
notates it with '-thiqk') was only found in three of the seven localities
in Australia that were surveyed (see the table on page 244), although
schoolteachers had also reported alternating pronunciations between '-iqk'
and '-in' forms in Brisbane.
 
The New Zealand examples (see page 245) indicate that the '-iqk'
pronunciation was used by less than 25% of the people surveyed --  mainly
schoolchildren, it seems -- in Wellington, Napier, Nelson, Christchurch and
Dunedin.
 
Mike
 
 
Prof M K C MacMahon  Dept of English Language  University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ  Scotland/UK
Phone: +44 (0)141 330 4596
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 3531
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/EngLang