Auckland Voices: Tracing the history of the New Zealand accent with Dr Brook Ross

Where did the New Zealand accent come from and why does it sound the way it does today? Surprisingly, Auckland, NZ’s largest urban centre, has been notably underrepresented in research on the origins of our accent. Past work has been largely South Island and rurally focused, however newly rediscovered historical writings suggest the NZ accent may have developed fastest in the North Island, particularly in Auckland. To tell us more about this we welcomed Dr Brooke Ross who is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at the University of Auckland. With a background in Linguistics and Speech Science, her interdisciplinary research uses speech technology to understand how and why the New Zealand accent is changing over time. This research used Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections at the corpus of material from which to study the accent. You can access the collections via the Oral History tile here: https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/ This is a recording of the Tāmaki Untold talk delivered at the Central City Library on Saturday 23 May 2026.