WANG-AREE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 404, 21 March 1947, Page 17

WANG-AREE

Sir,-About the pronunciation of Whangarei: I agree with Mr. Fairburn that the ei at the end is not one sound, neither ree nor ray and yet it was neither two vowels nor yet a diphthong,

Rayee is not exactly correct. The old Maoris shortened the two vowel sounds and tied them together soiclosely that they were neither two nor one. The Maoris to-day slur them into a diphthong that has exactly the sound that knife has in Glasgow. , Mr. Fairburn says that his father’s pronunciation was Whanga-r-e-i. It’s’ very likely it was Wha-nga-r-ei. The Maoris put the ng at the beginning of the syllable, not at the end as we do. Very few pakehas can do it, but it’s perfectly easy if you have a good teacher, The wh is a great stumbling-block to all English people who know only their own language. It is a sound quite unknown in ordinary good English, though known and used by Scots, Irishmen, and Maoris and I have no doubt many others. The Scot says what and when. The Englishman drops the aspirate completely and says w’at and w’en and doesn’t know that he has done so. There is no combination of letters that will show an Englishman how to say what. He simply can’t make the sound. Thackeray tried to express it by spelling it phwat. The Anglo-Saxon spelling was hwaet. That was exactly correct, but we have forgotten it. The true sound of hw is familiar to all Scots and Irish, but to the English it is unknown and unpronounceable. The pity is that many of the Maoris now say Fangara when they: mean Whangara. It was bound to come; the correct pronunciation of the Scottish tongue is fading away, even in Scotland. |

THOS.

TODD

(Gisborne).