New+Zealand+-+An+English+speaking+country

New Zealand

** Introduction **
We (Hallvard and Kevin) decided to write about New Zealand because we couldn’t choose Ireland. We worked on this for 2 weeks, and learned a lot of new things about New Zealand. The assignment was departed in three parts, so that’s why this is in three parts. The first part is information about New Zealand. The second is about why they talk English on New Zealand. The last is about similarities between Britain and New Zealand.

1 Short About the Country

**Early history **
New Zealand was first discovered by the people that are now called the Maori. They came around 2000-700 years ago. New Zealand was one of the last discovered and populated islands in the world. Many years later the Dutch discovered New Zealand, but it was never under their control, because the Maoris attacked and stopped them. So the Dutch left, but the land was later named after a part of Holland called Zelland. So that is why it was named New Zealand.

New Zealand is in the Pacific Ocean. It consists of two big islands, the north and the south island. The north island is the most populated with 3 million citizens, while the south island only has got 1 million. The north island has the capital Wellington and most of the biggest cities, including  t   he biggest city Auckland with 1 223 000 citizens, which is more than ¼ of the total population. ** How You Might Think about New Zealand **  New Zealand is known as Australia’s little brother, because New Zealand is pretty small compared to its giant neighbour Australia. But even though they seem to be very close neighbours when you see the countries on a globe so is the fact that there are 2000 km of sea between them. To put it in perspective: Norway is 2600 km long from Nordkapp to Lindesnes, and that is also the distance from the south end of Norway to Rome in Italy. That explains very well why New Zealand was discovered so late, because New Zealand is far away from everything. Because of this distance, even to their closest neighbour Australia, they have not had many countries to trade with before the airplanes became available for usual trading. Only then they could tr ade with USA, China and other Asian countries on a big scale.

New Zealand is maybe most known for having more sheep than humans. Especially after the horror/comedy film “Black sh eep” came out in 2006 (The movie is about sheep in New Zealand that are getting like zombies, and decide to take revenge on the farmers). Some others might connect it with one of the most known films in the world, “The lord of the rings” and all the beautiful New Zealand nature they saw during the movie which was filmed on New Zealand.

** New Zealand ** **Nature** The New Zealand nature is beautiful. It has many beautiful mountains; there are as much as 18 mountains that are higher than 3000 meters only on New Zealand. These mountains lay in the New Zealand Alps. New Zealand also has beautiful long beaches, big fjords along its very long coastline. In the inland there is everything from wide green farm land to big forests. The New Zealanders have all this great nature, and they want to keep it beautiful, so about 30% of whole New Zealand is protected. In that way this beautiful nature will not be ruined by cities and factories. New Zealand is as told, well known for its l   arge sheep population, there are 47,2 million sheep in this country. That is 11 times as many as the number of people. This statistic really shows what New Zealands economy is based on. The biggest income of New Zealand comes from export of dairy products, and most of the economic is built on agriculture. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> 2 Why do they talk English?
 * The British are coming **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">The people that live on New Zealand speak English for several reasons. It started when the English explorer James Cook came to the islands in 1769. He found many interesting things on New Zealand, especially the discovery of many whales. These discoveries made many, especially English whale hunters, come to the area. These hunters soon settled on New Zealand and started to build small towns. The settlers had guns with them, this weapon was usual in Europe, but the Maoris had never seen such a powerful weapon before. Many tribes bought this new weapon from the settlers, because they thought they would be able to beat the other Maori tribes with it. The problem was that almost every tribe bought guns, and the Maori war ended pretty fast.

In 1840 New Zealand became a part of the British colony New South Wales. The Maoris signed an agreement that gave them protection and let them keep land. Many of these promises were not halt. Since most of the European settlers were British, there was not much resistance against becoming a British colony. The English talking population that had immigrated to New Zealand and the rulers were British. So it was natural t hat English became the ruling writing and speaking language in this new colony. The colony time ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 144%;">New Zealand was not the same kind of colony as the African and Asian colonies. New Zealand had soon more British settlers than natives, so there were not many natives to work for them. There were not many valuable recourses or exotic goods to steal in this colony either. It was a colony that was not very different from the British Isles themselves. It had much land that they could grow food on and keep ranch animals and there was fish in the water to catch.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16pt;">

New Zealand started to sell their dairy products and other farming products to Britain in a pretty good deal. So since the New Zealanders were mostly British, New Zealand was more treated like a part of Britain than a colony. Since they were treated by the British as fellow British citizens, they became very close to Britain. They supported Britain in all the wars they fought from 1850-1950. New Zealand relationship to Britain is very like Britain’s relationship to New Zealand’s closest neighbour Australia, the only difference is that the New Zealanders were not the children of deported criminals, but as I have told earlier they were mostly children of whale hunters, even though there came many Scottish and English settlers from 1841 when New Zealand became a single colony.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(New Zealands flag really shows their close relationship to Britain).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">So it is the colonization with lots of British immigrants and the close trade and army relationship after their independent which is why the people on New Zealand New Zealand became absolutely independent in 1947, New Zealand continued to have a very close relationship with England. They especially had a very close trading connection and New Zealand’s economy was mostly based on the products they got from agriculture, like meat and dairy products. These products were mostly sold to Britain or Australia, this trade made New Zealand dependent to Britain.

So it is the colonization with lots of British immigrants and the close trade and army relationship after their independent which is why the people on New Zealand talks English, even when talks English.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 20pt;">3 Similarities between Great Britain and New Zealand **
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Great Britain and New Zealand has some similarities like: Religion, language, holidays and a few more.

The similarities in religion are what they believe, which is Christianity. 81% of New Zealand’s population is Christian, and Great Britain has about 48%. Great Britain has also Hinduism, Buddhism and atheism. New Zealand has about 4 million people and Britain has about 60 million people, so Britain still have more Christians than New Zealand.

They have the same language, English though the New Zealand-English is more similar to Australian-English than English. And the same queen: Queen Elisabeth 2. (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) She was born 21. April, 1926. Elizabeth became queen over Canada, New Zealand, The UK, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon when her father, George VI, in 1952. She has been one of the longest monarchs; she has been queen for 57 years. Elizabeth married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947. They have 4 children and 8 grandchildren.

Great Britain and New Zealand have very similarities in the school system. Both countries have High School, College and Kindergarten. They have many schools you can choose and it’s a good education offer.

The holydays they have is Christmas, Easter, Halloween and New Year. Britain and New Zealand has the 25th December as Christmas day. The only reason we have Christmas is because Christ was born. That’s why we celebrate it, though many kids don’t know why we celebrate Christmas. Just as you know, the Santa character we know today was created be the Coca Cola company. On Halloween kids goes around and ask for candy. If they don’t get candy, they start doing pranks with people. On New Year they shoot rockets up in the air to celebrate. On Easter they collect eggs, but if you ask a child what Easter is about he would tell you about the Easter bunny, but Easter is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical and it is celebrated in memory of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. New Zealand and Great Britain are about the same size, the UK is about 229 850 km² and New Zealand is 270.534 km² so it’s not many km² left before they are the same size.

Britain and New Zealand they have both a parliamentary monarchy, though the laws can be totally different even though they have the same monarchy. [] [] [] [] [] []
 * Sources: **

[] 16.09.2009

[] 18.09.2009

[] 22.09.2009

[] (To find out how long Norway is) 25.09.2009

[] 24.09.2009

[] 25.09.2009

[] 25.09.2009

[] 25.09.2009

[] 25.09.2009