The Dictionary of New Zealand English: A Beginning, Middle and (sometime) an End

Abstract

When I enrolled for a PhD in 1951 in the now defunct University of New Zealand, and at Professor I.A. Gordon's suggestion took up 'A History of New Zealand English' as a topic, I had no idea what I was about, nor what constituted 'NZ English'. My only two guides were Sidney J. Baker's New Zealand Slang and Dr Hocken's A Bibliography of the Literature Relating to New Zealand and the Turnbull and General Assembly Libraries catalogues such as they were then. I hit upon the idea of verifying Baker's collection and branching out from there. This I began to do, and by the kindness of early librarians (especially Bob Lamb then of the General Assembly Library) was allowed into the library bowels to read shelves full of good New Zealand stuff. I made a habit of reading from the top shelf down, probably from a desperate attempt to get some appearance of order or method into my research. I tested out newspapers by reading all the files of the Evening Post to 1940, but found this unproductive, probably because at this time I didn't know what I was looking for. My sights were then set too high on the obvious - the 'bush. 'boohai' words, or on the unconventional - on slang terms most of which proved to be general English in the end.