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I hope there aren't any New Zealanders reading this!
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You think?
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Kiwis also have lost the ability to distinguish between the 'eer' and 'air' sounds.
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You can make a fair estimate as to a Kiwi's age with that one. Anyone who can still distinguish the sounds is almost certainly over 35. Me included.
I still remember the first time I heard the sounds confused. A young techie guy at a place where I was consulting seemed to be telling me that a disc was "shearing". This is a nasty business, with the top layer being scraped off. I realised he meant "sharing", which is quite a different matter.
I heard a linguist on the radio a little while ago commenting that the sounds in "sea" and "see" used to be distinguishable by English speakers. Vowel sounds have a way of being combined.
We do still have a Air Force, btw. No fighter planes, though.