Transcript of AE 1334 - The Goss: The Biggest Differences & Similarities Between Australia & New Zealand

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete. Hang on. Gotta do it. This one's not beer, though.

No, we're taking it easy.

I'm gonna be rude. I've got to do the slurp to get rid of the dregs off the top of the can before I drip them on my shirt.

What are the similarities and differences between Australia and New Zealand?

Um, yeah.

It's so funny. This is, I open it up on Reddit and this is under Ask An Australian as the..

The original post disappeared.

Yeah, it's weird..

All the comments are still there.

Yeah, it says..

I'm not a Reddit person, but.

Yeah.

It happens every now and then where the the the original post has disappeared, but all of the replies are still there.

Yeah, I know it's a bit of a bizarre thing. Anyway, what would you say prior, prior to me reading out any of these? Um, yeah. Any of these ones.

My apologies to my New Zealand friends. They were about my taking the piss for your accent.

They probably do the same for us.

Uh, no. They New Zealanders can't do an Australian accent. Like Australians can't do a New Zealand accent.

Yeah. That's it. That's all they..

And they both get accused of being South African, which is an ultimate insult in accent.

Have you heard what a South African accent sounds?

Well, there's an English South African and then there's the Afrikaner accent.

Yeah, it's a weird one.

Anyway..

Anyway.

What are some of the similarities. What would you say are the similarities? Are there more similarities than differences?

Well, depending on where you put the stake in the ground to start with. If you're talking about, what are there, 200 and something countries in the world.

195.

Then, you just made that up. Or you actually..

No! I read that today!

Yeah. Well, and then there are some principalities and things that probably don't count as a country. But anyway, let's call it 200, rounded at 200 or 195.

Hey, Siri. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't mention the S word.

It's all right.

It's not..

It's not. Oh, mine's in Portuguese, so it doesn't answer.

Oh yeah. What's Portuguese. What's..

It'll be [speaks Portuguese] Siri.

Nah, it's not doing it.

No, not.

So if you were to say how close is any other country to Australia? New Zealand is by far the closest.

Wasn't it Indonesia or Papua New Guinea?

No, not in geography.

Yeah yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

Yeah. Papua New Guinea is the closest. Indonesia second. Uh, well, East Timor, then Indonesia. I'm not sure whether East Timor or West Timor is closer to Australia, because the Timor island is sort of parallel to the Australian coast. But, um, so it's probably East Timor and then Indonesia and then New Zealand geographically. But in terms of culture, um, then they are clearly most similar. Uh, the single biggest difference, other than me taking the piss with the accent, um, and look, a lot of people can't tell the difference. You know, a lot of non Australians.

.. Being Canadians, I find that so difficult to pick apart, like at least the West Coast American accent and Canadians.

Yeah. It's harder to pick somebody from British Columbia and California.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like go to Vancouver..

And you go to. Well, forget the French speaking ones because you can pick somebody from Quebec. Um, or a French speaker from New Brunswick easily. Or you can pick somebody from Nova Scotia. And Newfoundland is completely different. They're just the weirdest accent. But yeah, but yeah. So there are there are bigger variations in North American accents than there are in Australia or New Zealand. New Zealand's accents tend to get more, um, more different from Australia the further south you go in New Zealand.

Yeah.

They get more Scottish sounding.

Oh, really?

Umm..

That's right. I remember we had a New Zealand teacher who would always say 'a wee bit'.

Oh yeah, 'wee', that's, that's very easy..

Something was in a little bit and it was, I imagine she's from the south part where there's loads of Scots because no one says that in Australian English and that's Scottish..

Very New Zealand thing and a very Scottish thing to say. Um, but I think apart from the accent thing, which by far the biggest difference is the, um, it's hard to hard to say indigenous culture, because I don't think the Maori even claim to be indigenous to New Zealand because they've been Polynesian. They've only been there about 800 years.

Yeah.

Um, and so they are Polynesian. They identify as Polynesian rather than New Zealanders. But, you know, clearly they've got an 800 year history of having migrated to, to New Zealand. Um, but the Maori culture is much more part of mainstream culture than our Aboriginal culture is in Australia. But that's no surprise because there is about one third of, um, the New Zealand population is Maori or Pacific Islander or other Polynesians, as opposed to roughly 2 to 3% in Australia..

As in..

Identify being Indigenous Australians. So there's no surprise there. But they also have the. The, the only semi in this case but indigenous people in the world who have never been conquered.

Yeah. Well, we have a uh, we- they have a treaty with the.

Yeah, the Treaty of Waitangi.

Yeah.

Well, it's a treaty with the Queen. With Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria.

Before New Zealand. Well, New Zealand was still a colony.

Yeah.

Um, and, um, the Treaty of Waitangi set out that, you know, Maori would have a legitimate status within the population of New Zealand.

Aren't they the only..

Language and..

Sort of indigenous group to have ever had that with the British Empire?

Yeah. And they're the only ones who's never been conquered.

Yeah.

Because they still have that thing of we are a legitimate part of.

Well..

And they never got defeated, never got shuffled off into, um, you know, tribal areas or anything like that. It was just they're just part of their culture. Now there is..

Very fierce warriors though.

They were! Oh yeah!

Defend themselves well.

Yeah, but they didn't have guns.

Yes.

Like, you know, they lost these warriors.

But. Um, but yeah, so I mean, in New Zealand, the, um, a lot of New Zealanders speak at least some Maori. They can not necessarily have a detailed conversation, but they will introduce themselves or, you know, you know, do those sort of things. Um, it's a bilingual country, a true bilingual country in that almost all public signage now is in English and in Maori. Um, so that's, that's the clear, distinct difference, I think, between Australians and New Zealanders, that. So.

But you couldn't do that here the same way because we have so many different languages and everything.

And there's no written language. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, Polynesians um, developed, written. They, they didn't have written language originally, but they developed written language, um, as English, French, Spanish, Portuguese. Um people started to land in Polynesian territories around the Pacific. Um, they developed the ability to, you know or not, ability. They didn't need it, but the Europeans wanted to write down that language. And so there became a standardised way of writing out that language. Whereas the indigenous languages in Australia have never had a written thing, it's always been you can look at the the number of ways that the, you know, the Wathaurong people and the region.

Are referred to..

To Wathaurong itself, has any number of different spellings.

And pronunciations.

And pronunciations, um, and, and so but you're right. Like what is it, 600 different language groups in Australian dialects.

Yeah. There'd be like 300 languages, or at least there were prior to a whole bunch of.

Yeah. So, so there is no common language.

Uh, the thing that always blows my mind about Australian linguistics, I believe there's 20. I think it's like 29 language families.

And there's only about six in the rest of the world.

Speaker4:
Well, no. Well, I don't know what the exact number is, but like, Europe would have something like maybe 3 or 4.

Yeah.

So, like, you know, Russian, even Hindi and English are all in the exact same language family. Indo-European, right. You would have the Basque language family because that's like an isolate. And then you would have the, um, Uralic languages like Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish. That's another one, but that's about it. Whereas the indigenous languages in Australia, there's like apparently. Yeah, 20 something of them and most of them are up in the Northern Territory.

Yes.

The whole of the continent, outside of pretty much that Northern Territory, one single language group.

They didn't have while they had the most severe changes in seasonal climate in terms of wet season and dry season, as we would call it, they would many certainly top end of the Northern Territory. Many indigenous people would say they're either seven to 8 or 9 seasons. Um, but the they weren't migratory in a sense that all the seasons did was change the food and stuff that was available to them. Whereas many places in south eastern Australia and south western Australia. People had to move around.

Yeah.

You know, a lot more.

So all right so I fibbed. It's, there's- oh no that's Victoria, yeah. There may be as many as 13. Either way, there's a lot of language families and there's 250 languages and 800 dialects in Australia. But that's you know, the biggest reason is because of the amount of time.

Yeah. Well, you've got 60,000 years. To do it. And they lived in small groups. Um, so they were sort of by definition, isolated in a sense of their day to day activities. And yes, they would trade with, you know, groups, you know, that were close by, um, but they would end up with a different dialect because they're effectively isolated most of the time.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah. So I think that's the biggest difference is that, umm..

Yeah.

Uh, cultural difference. You know, Australia is we while we say it is a is a multicultural country. It is now. But our underlying culture from the time of European settlement has been British.

Mhm.

New Zealand has had the same thing settled at the same time. Um but the Maori culture sits there equivalent to the British culture.

Yes.

Um, so both countries are very multicultural in the sense that of the 195 countries, I'll guarantee you, 195 of them are represented in Australia and New Zealand.

Probably. Close to.

Yeah.

You would imagine.

But our language and our basic underlying culture is typically British in Australia, British and Maori and..

What are some of the differences, like economics wise, it seems like New Zealand is as expensive, if not worse than Australia. And as a result, we have.

And their wages are lower.

Yeah. Heaps of New Zealanders every single year are coming to Australia. They're in a massive crisis. It's the cost of living.

What's the single biggest, second biggest city in New Zealand? Auckland. Australia? Yeah. The biggest is Auckland, which has more than a third of the population, nearly 40% of the population of the country.

Insane.

But there's a half a million people who were born in New Zealand who live in Australia. So.

Let's see, how many migrants 586,000 as of 2022.

Yeah.

And their population? What is it? 4 million?

4 million?

Yeah.

Smaller than Melbourne or Sydney.

So what? I guess they can come here without a visa. And they..

Yeah, we have..

They can pretty much do anything.

With Australia, you can do the same thing. We have, you know, you can go without visas. You automatically get government access to government rights like unemployment benefits, um, healthcare, all that sort of stuff. Um, free education, schools, all of that is transferred.

Even in healthcare and everything like that? But I imagine what do they draw the line at? Like, um, the Dole, you know?

Nope!

Really. So you can even get in the Dole.

You have to register yourself as an Australian resident. Yeah. You don't just walk over here and go, Oh I've been here for three weeks. Give me the Dole.

Yeah. I assume the difference was that you would just never be able to get government care. You could..

Basically, you can, you can register yourself an Australian, can go to New Zealand and just say, I'm going to stay here. Register yourself as a New Zealand resident.

Wow.

New Zealanders can do the same thing in Australia.

And then you're as much.

So you're a, you know.

Yeah.

You are not an Australian citizen, but you're automatically an Australian resident.

That's pretty crazy if our tax dollars will go to non-citizens though.

Yeah. But they're working.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well and there is..

Cause basically they come here to get jobs.

Yeah. There's a clause in the Constitution that says that New Zealand can join as a state of Australia if it wants.

Correct.

Which is crazy.

Yeah.

I wonder how many other..

Originally..

Countries share..

And the New Zealand was part of the original discussion about Australia becoming a, you know, a country when we, you know, federation. Now, they chose not to, stay alone, but it was part of the original discussion. Didn't go very far. But.

Let's see, I wonder why New Zealand chose to not become- one of the reasons that New Zealand chose not to join Australia was due to perceptions that the indigenous Maori population would suffer as a result. Yeah. Fair enough. And also the distance. 1500km away.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's..

I think Tasmania is isolated.

Yeah. I know. But yeah I guess. Yeah. You wonder how much it would have made a difference economically though, if, if it had joined up for the people of New Zealand. I guess you know who are at the moment at least doing worse on average, it seems. If you were to compare things like wage and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, let's go through some of these comments. So Aussies and Kiwis like to act like we hate each other, but put us in a room full of other English speaking countries and we'll probably gravitate towards each other, um, than the rest of the people in there. Until sport comes on.

Yeah. But and I use the analogy of, um, it's like two siblings.

Yeah. You shit on each other..

.. Like hell in the backyard.

Yeah.

But if the kid next door jumps the fence, all of a sudden it's two against one.

Yeah. That's true, isn't it? It's so funny how I imagine this is not unique to us. It's just a cultural thing where it's like the, the friend of my friend. The friend of my enemy is my enemy, you know, that sort of thing. Or the enemy of my enemy is my friend type thing where you, you may have issues with your neighbour, but then when there's another external actor or force or something, it's kind of like, no, actually we're a team now. And that's that's much more..

It's two against one all of a sudden.

Yeah..

Which is..

If America must have that.

No it's not, you know, not. No.

I guess they probably..

Well, Americans don't give a monkeys about Canada.

Or anyone. They don't really..

They don't even think about them except Trump who wants to create the 51st state.

He's totally saying all that crap to get through all this other..

It's just a deflection!

He wants everyone to ignore what's really going on.

But but Canadians would. You cannot use that analogy. I've used that analogy with lots of my Canadian friends, because I used to work for a Canadian company and, you know, spent a quarter of my life in the US and Canada for ten years. And, um, and they just look at you and go, nah, you know, and I and and using sport as the example, most Australians who are interested in sport, other than very specific things about we always want to beat England in cricket, you know, but anything where, you know, you go to the Olympics, we want to make sure that we beat New Zealand. Um, but if New Zealand is playing anybody else, we will barracking for New Zealand. Canadians? Anybody could have beat America.

Mhm.

Anybody. Couldn't care. If North Korea beat America. Whoa. You know.

Suck it. Yeah.

So Canadians just don't have that same relationship.

Interesting. Yeah.

Because I don't think- well I think firstly, there's the Canada and the US are contiguous in that they share a border.

Mhm.

And it's a very long border. You know I think it's the longest border in the world.

Yeah.

Maybe Russia and China.

Between two countries.

Between two countries. Um but it's, um, it's also that the US has always been the economic big brother. You know, they're ten times the size of Canada in population and probably 20 or 30 times the size in economy. Um, so Canada has always had to fight for economic independence.

Yeah.

Um, and it's taken for years to have, you know, decades, centuries, uh, of the development of those two countries to actually have a fair trade agreement between them.

Yeah.

Now, they threw Mexico into it as well, which makes sense, too. But it was all US-driven. Yeah. Canada have always wanted it. Mexico had always wanted it. The US is going. No no no, no. And then all of a sudden it made sense. Uh, whereas Australia and New Zealand have always had that, you know, we just treat you as us, you know, that's politically and economically.

Alright. The next one, this is funny. You will find that Australians tend to live in Australia, whereas Kiwis tend to live in Australia.

Yeah. Yeah. There aren't many, like you said. What, 500 and something thousand?

Yeah, that's pretty crazy.

New Zealand immigrants to Australia,

.. know which country..

There are more. There aren't many more. There aren't many Australians going to live in New Zealand. So.

I wonder if, if New Zealand is the country that the most Aussies live in outside of Australia? No, it's not the UK, then the United States, then New Zealand, then Canada. So 160,000 Australians live in the UK as of 2021. Um 100,000, as of 2019. In the United States. And yeah, 76,000 in New Zealand.

As opposed to 500,000 coming the other way.

Yeah, it would be a nice place to go, but I imagine it would wear off pretty quickly where it would get very cold and..

New Zealand?

Yeah. Expensive.

Well, it's not cold.

It depends where you live, I guess.

Yeah.

Auckland's yeah?

Auckland's like Melbourne doesn't get as hot, but it doesn't get as cold in winter.

Yeah.

Firstly Australia and New Zealand are very similar. So much so there is an almost sibling like relationship between the two. There you go. We've already talked about that. As someone else touched on, though, New Zealand indigenous culture has embraced a whole lot more than Australia does its own. Although again, we just don't have one culture and that's the issue. I think if we did have just one indigenous culture here in Australia, it would be a completely different story. You know, you'd have this language taught in schools, everyone would be a much more all over the country would know about this one culture, shared, all that sort of stuff. Um, so yeah, Australia is huge by comparison, being approximately 29 times the size of New Zealand. New Zealand's climate is fairly consistent across the country. However, in Australia it varies wildly, um, widely across the country.

Or wildly, depending on how you want to look at it.

And wildlife between the two is quite different too.

Yes.

Yeah, I think a lot of these do tend to be this rivalry. And then they talk about like Maori indigenous differences. Um, but it is, it is interesting isn't it.

Yeah. I think geographically um very different obviously Australia size. Um, there are deserts in New Zealand. There'll be some spots that you can sort of call deserts, but they're not very big. You could walk across them. Um. Yeah. Um but we're nowhere near as mountainous.

Yeah.

As they are. And they're much more geologically active.

Yes.

You know, constantly got volcanic activity..

Earthquakes.

Earthquakes going all the time. So.

I know. It's absolutely nuts.

Very rare in Australia.

Well, and that would be one of the big ones there. Skiing would shit all over ours. The amount of, like, huge mountains they have that you can go skiing on and the snow cover and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah. And being further south as well, in the South Island, being further south than an Australian ski resorts, it means they last longer too. And you know, our winter, our winter doesn't last very long.

So yeah, you get a handful of months right. Yeah. And they would have more natural disasters I imagine, at least in terms of like earthquakes being one of them. That would happen a lot more frequently. Um.

Volcanic activity.

Yeah. And it's funny. Yeah. Someone else here says, like, we make fun of each other. You cannot make fun of our cousins.

Yes.

But yeah, it is. It is interesting, isn't it, because we both come from like the Brits, the. But we don't really have that kind of same attitude towards the Brits seeing them as like a sibling or a cousin or anything. They're more like a parent kind of relationship where we kind of, there's not that same kind of, don't you talk about the Brits that way. It's sort of like, oh yeah, fuck em, you know.

Pretty much.

If anyone. I mean, you know, that's not to say we don't love, um, you know, the Brits at, at times, but if, if you met, say, like an American who was shitting all over New Zealand, you would probably be like, mate.

Yeah.

You know.

Cut it out.

Cut it out, pull your thumb out. Whereas if they were shitting on the Brits, you'd probably be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

At least, present your argument.

Yeah. I think, I feel like we would probably come to Canada's aid in that fight a little bit more than we would Britain to. Like, if you heard..

Canada would be the other one..

But we don't talk about them that way.

Yeah, Canada would be the other one that the other country that would be similar to Australia and New Zealand. And it is.

Yeah.

And it's the same thing. It's a British colony that has never. It never went down the United States track of fighting for independence, its independence as just sort of evolved, like we're still part of the British Commonwealth. Um, but we're effectively independent. But it just evolved.

I think they're similar. Right? They have this reputation of being pathologically friendly and nice.

Oh, Canadians are pathologically nice.

And they just don't have that kind of American and British to some degree. That kind of arrogance of superiority, that kind of like, Freedom! We're number one! Or the British kind of like, that upper class kind of tinge to it quite often, where you're like.

We used to have the standard line, instead of, you know, having spent a lot of time in the US. Um, and I've probably said this before of, you know, the Americans are born with a tattoo on their forehead that says, I was born in the greatest country in the world, and it's written in reverse. So they see it in the mirror every morning. Um, Uh, and I joke about that with them. And they go, oh, of course it's the greatest country in the world. I said, you haven't been to New Zealand.

You haven't been anywhere else.

And I'm not even being parochial about that by saying, you know, because I'm an Australian. I said, seriously, you haven't been to New Zealand. Name anything. New Zealand wins.

But you wonder how much they..

And they all look at me and go, what are you talking about? I said, just name something. It doesn't matter. New Zealand wins.

You wonder how much though a big part of their kind of self arrogance and, um, love of their own country as being number one is like taught through high school and primary school, right? Because they have so much more of a kind of patriotic upbringing.

And that comes from, you know, fighting for their independence.

Yeah.

You know, that, that they, they grew up beyond the war of independence. Americans grew up fighting to be free and independent and proud of it.

Yeah.

Almost no other country in the world has done that.

Yeah.

To the same extent.

To have to fight for their existence that way. And again, it's one of those things..

Like a lot of countries have had wars to remain in existence.

Yes.

But to fight off your, you know, the the country that created you.

Mhm.

Um, almost nobody else has done it. So correct me if I'm wrong in the comments.

I'm sure there's other situations, but it is one of those interesting things like yeah, just how different culturally America is from I think any other English speaking country, right. Like they just do have their own really unique, um, view of themselves. And I think two of the rest of the world, you know, I think a lot of Americans, you wonder if you were to sort of survey the average American, how much they would know about the rest of the world compared to people from other parts of the world?

Oh, yeah.

Like if you were to interview people from Norway or Australia or Canada or France.

Well, yeah, I think and there's some, there's some sort of semi unique parts of that. Um, Because Australia and America have got a very similar, in a sense of geography in that we are huge as a landmass.

Mhm.

Australia doesn't have a big population, but you know, so your average American, um, whatever that means, because there are so many different places and different sorts of cultures and things within the United States. But your average American, um.

The stereotype.

The stereotype, the cliche doesn't travel outside the United States.

Yeah.

You don't have to, because there are so many other places that you can go in the United States.

And that's the weird thing, too..

It's not they don't travel.

Any American you meet in Australia is almost certainly going to be a Democrat.

Yeah.

And very worldly and really nice and not like guns, you know. Like you're going to meet these Americans and you're like, oh, these are the ones that get escape velocity.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Um, flip that around to Europe. Yeah. How many countries are there in Europe? 30 ish? You can travel from one side of Europe to the other in less time than it takes to cross the United States or Australia.

For like 100 bucks.

And, and you can go to another country in. If you're in the middle of Germany, you can go to 3 or 4 other countries in a half a day's drive.

Yeah. It's nuts.

And Germany is second biggest country. And take out Russia the second biggest. I think France or Germany are about close. But go to the middle of France. Half a day's drive. You're out of France.

Yeah.

That's so. Lots of Europeans just travel.

Yeah.

They almost all speak multiple languages.

You're gonna be aware.

Yeah, because. Because they're constantly and certainly in, in your generation, um, in the last 30 to 40 years with the common, you know, European common community, the European common.

The EU, yeah.

Um, that they, they are effectively one economy.

Mhm.

Um, so, you know, it's free trade, free travel. So.

It would be interesting to know to know more, I guess, about European countries and how they view themselves. Like to one another. Because there must be so many of these types of Australian-New Zealand-type relationships between neighbouring countries or worse..

They're all, I think they're all heavy rivalries. And those rivalries have got long standing politico- geo-political history of, you know, the border between modern Germany and Poland has been so flexible over even just the last 200 years.

Yeah.

France and Germany, the same thing.

But England and France, through invading one another and taking over each other. But then you would imagine the Scandinavian countries like, you know, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, you would imagine they're probably a lot more, at least modern in modern times, sibling type relationships between them than they are, say, like America and Australia type, you know, sort of like. Again, it's almost like this domineering kind of stepdad, um, parent kind of relationship, right, with America where it's like, Great Britain's the mother.

Yeah.

And we have this incredibly large, violent stepdad that kind of protects us, but also forces us to do whatever it wants.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's probably a fun place to end.

Oh, yeah.

You'll have to let us know, guys, if you've travelled to New Zealand and have also spent time in Australia, what you think the differences are like and if you have, if you're from another country where you have these types of relationships with neighbouring countries.

Yeah.

It's always interesting to know about those sort of, you know, situations. Anyway, thanks for hanging out and we'll chat next time.

Bye!

See ya!