The South Island accent

I've mentioned before how it took me some time to learn to 'hear' the NZ accent.  Of course, I'm based in Auckland, so I learned to hear the Auckland accent.  But on a recent train ride where I was situated next to an extremely chatty gentleman, I learned that just as in the US, there is indeed a dramatic regional variation across NZ.

About 20% of the country's population lives in the South Island, and most of them in Christchurch and Dunedin.  The rest are spread across small rural enclaves with their own local flavour.

This gentleman of my acquaintance was from a village outside of Invercargill, right at the very bottom of the South Island.  But, he sounded (to my ignorant ear) like a Scot with a mouth full of food.  In our half-hour chat, I learned that he used to paint houses and once worked as a law clerk or something.  And that is all I learned.  It wasn't that he didn't volunteer much about himself... trust me that he gave me lots and lots of commentary to work with.  But I lost 95% of it because I simply couldn't translate it into something that made sense for me.  I eventually gave up on asking, 'Excuse me?'  'I'm sorry?' because I found that I couldn't understand the slower-and-clearer version either, and resigned myself to just having to make do with catching the odd word here and there, and hoping I could fill in the blanks.

So there is still work to do regarding assimilation.