The Language of Nineteenth-Century Irish Immigrants to New Zealand

Abstract

Abstract The Irish constituted the third largest group of the British-born founder population in New Zealand. Nevertheless, only few characteristic Irish English features seem to have survived in the colony. Letters that these settlers sent home to Ireland can provide evidence of language variation in early New Zealand English, while theoretical frameworks for the development of postcolonial languages, such as Trudgill’s New-Dialect Formation Model or Schneider’s Dynamic Model, can help us understand the different stages in the development of this variety. This chapter investigates characteristic Irish English features, in particular irregular article use and the indefinite anterior perfective, among early Irish settlers and their colonial-born children in light of Trudgill’s and Schneider’s predictions regarding the development of New Zealand English. Such real-time studies can provide a micro-perspective of the stages described in these models, and reveal how language really varied within single families.