MAORI PRONUNCIATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 314, 29 June 1945, Page 5

MAORI PRONUNCIATION

Sir,-I think there is something to be said for the strictures your correspondent Kia Tika passes on the announcers regarding their pronunciation of Maori place names, but is it not a fact that the same applies to an even greater extent to the average, Pakeha in this country? I doubt if one person in a thousand pronounces all Maori place names correctly. How many people, for instance, pronounce all or any of the following names corr ly: Orakei, Kawau, Ngaio, Patea, Kea, Timaru, Waimate, or Onehunga. Probably next to none. The chief difficulty, I think, is simply long established custom. It is customary for all of us to mispronounce 99 in every 100 names, and what we say goes. We find it easier to Anglicize, and so we take the line of least resistance. In this con‘nection it is particularly regrettable that the cities, towns, and local bodies are

continually sabstituting Maori names for Pakeha ones when renaming their streets, toads, etc., with the result that the slaughter of the Maori names goes on and is forever being extended. . To effect an improvement, however, I think we should start higher up than Kia Tika suggests. With this end in view | could we enot invite two such eminent leaders of the Maori race as Bishop Bennett, Bishop of Ao-te-Aroa, and Sir Apirana Ngata, to give such a campaign a lead? The Maori announcers in the Broadcasting Service could then carry on as suggested by your correspondent, and then extend instruction to ‘the public per medium of radio. Radio offers a wonderful opportunity. Cannot we take advantage of it?

MIMIC

(Walton).