There’s a lot to learn about life in New Zealand. Known by Māori as Aotearoa, or “The Land of the Long White Cloud”, the Kiwi nation certainly does have a lot of long white clouds.
1. There aren’t many people
If you don’t think humans are great company, New Zealand will be perfect for you. In a country that’s about 20,000 sq km larger than the United Kingdom, there are only around 4.8 million people. Contrast that with the 66.5 million people living in the UK. What’s more, over 86% of Kiwis live in urban areas, so the countryside is a fairly empty experience. For some that means “lonely”, for others it’s wonderfully “people free”.
2. But there are many sheep
On the other hand, you can’t move for sheep. They’re dotted all over the New Zealand landscape like fluffy white clouds, chomping grass and seriously outnumbering their human masters. That’s right, for every one New Zealander there are about six sheep. The total number of these woolly creatures is nearly 30 million, so in a sheep uprising the Kiwis would really have no chance; they’d get a sound bleating.
3. They have a very special accent
The New Zealand accent can be pretty confusing for newcomers. A Kiwi can sound Australian, South African and American in the space of five words. If you’re moving over there, you should forget everything you’ve ever learnt about vowel sounds. An ‘i’ sounds more like ‘uh’, so ‘fish and chips’ becomes ‘fush and chups’. Meanwhile, an ‘e’ sounds more like an ‘i’, which can cause a whole world of confusion. ‘Bed’ sounds like ‘bid’, ‘ten’ sounds like ‘tin’, ‘deck’… well, you get the idea.
4. And some special slang
You don’t need to learn a new language to live in New Zealand, but knowing some of the Kiwi lingo might be helpful. There are a lot of strange words and phrases flying around. Cling film is known as ‘glad wrap’, which makes it sound much more fun to use than it really is. A cool box is a ‘chilli bin’, a holiday home is a ‘bach’, flip-flops are ‘jandals’, and the middle of nowhere is known as the ‘wop wops’. If you’re just popping to the ‘dairy’ then you’re heading to the local shop (it doesn’t just relate to cheese and milk). Most importantly, if someone says ‘yeah-nah’, they’re not being indecisive – it’s just a very casual way of saying ‘no, thank you’.
5. Humans were late to the party
You know when you find a fiver down the back of the sofa? That’s sort of like what happened with us and New Zealand. The country was the final part of the world to be discovered by the human race. We thought we’d inhabited everywhere, then some East Polynesians went on a canoe trip and found two huge islands full of defenceless birds. What a find! Archaeological evidence suggests humans didn’t set foot on New Zealand until around 1250-1300. That’s over seven hundred years ago, but in historical terms that’s crazy late. These East Polynesians would become the indigenous New Zealanders known as Māori, who got there about three hundred years before the white men.
