Question

[tatjna]

If you're not from New Zealand, have a listen to this and tell  me if you can understand any of it.

Click to view

(it's mostly in English)

Comments

[sight]

I really didn't. Hahaha. I had no idea what they were saying at all. It's almost like a different language to me!!

[tatjna]

To be fair it's liberally sprinkled with Maori words. :)

But yeah, I was wondering how it'd sound to a non-kiwi ear.

[pundigrion]

Well, the video helped a lot admittedly! I twigged onto the veg right away, but it took a while to figure out what it was exactly and if not for the video title, to a Canadian is sounds an awful lot like how they are singing about how much they love hockey xD

I shall see you some Kiwi slang and raise you Newfie:

[tatjna]

That was hardcase. :)

I think kiwis have an advantage in this because most media comes from places that aren't here and that accent sounds like a cross between Canadian (which is close enough to US that it's easy to follow) and northern English. I had no trouble following it.

[pundigrion]

"They" say a lot of newscasters and such are Canadian or from the Western US because of the neutral accent...although there is not exactly one Canadian accent. Maybe they really mean Ontario since Toronto is the centre of the universe. I was quite put out that the accent between here and where I moved here from was so similar actually.

I think the Newfies would be pretty grumpy about hearing their accent sounds northern English since they are generally very proud of their Oirsh roots haha

[randomdreams]

that is AWESOME!
I got about maybe 40% of it first pass, but yeah it would have been a lot less without the video.

[tatjna]

I really like the Cuzzies. They're a spinoff from JGeek and the Geeks, who made this which I also think is cool:

[randomdreams]

Man, that is a lot of crazy in one place. I had no idea any of this existed!

[dreadbeard]

wow

[richaarde]

I didn't have any trouble understanding the lyrics that were in English. The Maori words thrown in made it tricky to follow, though, especially since it's not a language like Spanish that I'm at least vaguely familiar with.

[evilpettingz00]

I understood maaaybe a tenth of it. This was only one listening, though. The song is actually kind of catchy in an annoying way. XD. And what the heck is hangi anyway?

[tatjna]

Hangi is food, usually a bunch of leaf and root vegetables and onions and some meat, cooked in an earth oven. There's a WikiHow guide! :D

It's a traditional Maori way of feeding a lot of people and gathering a large family (whanau) over food is a big part of Maori culture so hangi is associated with hanging out with family and goofing around with them while you make the food and then pigging out on it - good times. The song is about that. It's pretty cool. :)

[evilpettingz00]

Oh, cool! :) I know practically nothing about Maori culture, save what tiny bit I might have gleaned from a few movies I've seen, which, for all I know, may not have even been good representations...so...in other words, nothing. ;)