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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 919, 22 March 1957, Page 11

Sir,- Your correspondent P. L. Porter is correct when he states that "there is a definite Australian type and the

original stock from England would, I fancy, be found to be a different shape and stature from their present descendants." A wide range of investigation, undertaken during the early 1930’s at the instance of the Australian Munitions Supply Board prior to producing moulds for gas masks, established the fact that there is a marked difference in measurement between the average English and the average Australian face. He is on less sure ground, however, when he suggests that the influence of environment is present in voice production as it affects New Zealand speech, If this supposition is correct, environment must exercise its influence extremely quickly. In 1892, when he was in New Zealand, Rudyard Kipling wrote a story exclusive to the Auckland Herald and Auckland Weekly News called "One Lady at Wairakei." In it he refers to "a New Zealand woman who talked about ‘ke-ows’ and ‘bye-bies.’" From the context it is obvious that she was a woman in her ¢arly thirties, so that she must have been following a speech pattern formed in the 1860's. A more likely explanation appears to be that as the great majority of our New Zealand pioneer forebears came from a social stratum which had had little or no opportunity of enjoying either education or culture, there must be some form of Gresham’s law governing speech as it does currency, whereby the bad drives out the good. The sage who first said "speech is silvern" may have been nearer the truth than even he thought he was. , MOA (Cambridge).