Piece:

“Do you have any slang in New Zealand that you don’t hear here at all?”

Oh yeah, we have lots.

Togs – swimsuits (apparently the old english form for swimsuit)

Jandals – flipflops

Motorway – freeway

Cuzzie – friends

Scarfies – people from Dunedien

Jafa – (Just another fucking Aucklander) People from Auckland

Stubbies – really short pants that men wear

Chur – thank you. I lot of people say chur instead of thanks.

Wops wops – middle of nowhere

“Is there a reason for any of this?”

No. Well some of them maybe

Westies/Bogans – People from west Aukland but it’s like dumb unwashed hippies

Munted – Broken

Oh, and we call ketchup tomato sauce.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is a USC student from New Zealand who lived in Auckland for 18 years. The above are popular youth phrases in New Zealand whose meaning does not carry over to the US.

Thoughts:

The most interesting ones of these to me are Jafa, and Westies because they are discriminatory phrases about people from Auckland, the city my informant is from. The previous pieces of folklore I had acquired from this person suggested a greater assimilation of culture between different peoples in New Zealand, but these phrases suggest that there are stereotype based rivalries between different geographic groups in New Zealand. Though I did not get one, I’m assuming there is also a word that Auklanders use to insult the people that call them Jafas or Westies.