PURER MAORI

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 921, 14 March 1930, Page 11

PURER MAORI

effort to preserve LANGUAGE GUIDE TO EUROPEANS Following a lecture last evening on the correct pronunciation of Maori words, the Akarana Maori Association considered a proposal to issue to educational institutions a text card on pronunciation. In view of the proposal of the education Department to teach p.t least an outline on Maori pronunciation in New Zealand schools, the association thinks the proposal would be of great assistance. At present, there is a tremendous amount of mutilation of place-names. A point raisi d before the meeting was the influence of dialects and local peculiat'iti es in the Maori language The ordinary opinion of students of the race has been that the speech of the Waikato tribes was taken by early niissiunar.es as standard Maori in their writings. The Maori employed in the Biblu in Maori is, to all intents and purposes, the Waikato speech, and this form of the language is considered to hold a place equivalent to that produced by Oxford rulings in Knglish. There are sharp differences in Maori dialects and, in former years, a tribesman could he distinguished immediately by his speech, whether he came from Chatham Islands, South Island tribes, the North Island West Coast the East Coast or North Auckland. ’ RULES ARE EASY

Addressing the association. Mr. Patrick Smj th said correct pronunciation was actually easy. The average European, under expert guidance, could learn the rules of pronunciation in two one-hour lessons. Maoris would assist in this as the-y would really bo grateful for an interest among Europeans to show regard for the native language. This would be a check to a tendency w hich could mean only the ultimate extinction of a fine form of the Polynesian language. Mr. Smyth referred to the suggestion first raised by a correspondent in The Sun, for the association to define rules. When one public body had expressed concern at the “difficulty of pronouncing Maori, the speaker had offered to give the members free lessons Much of the seif respect of the Maori race was centred in its language and the desfrabb:'. 1 ° n ° £ **" PUrity was highly