MAORI AS SPOKEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 5

MAORI AS SPOKEN

»ir-Can you stand another letter on this subject? I make this appeal with some diffidence. Apparently The Listener is not read by "The-man-in-the-street" (vide recent Parliamentary , discussion), and I always thought that The Listener was the best sixpence worth of reading in New Zealand. If there is qa wrong way of pronouncing a Maori word the Man-in-the-street can be relied on to find it out. But in the nine o’clock News recently I heard an announcer speak of Mr. H’NARee (appointed to some committee or other). The word is "Henry" (Henare). Another irk is Mr. OMARner, member for Eastern Maori). The word is "Ormond’-he is a descendant of a well-known Hawke’s Bay pioneering farming family. Still another -the birthplace of NGarimu, V.C., is "Jerusalem" (Hiroo harama). All of these, of course, are the Maori’s attempt to pronounce English words, The Rev. R. T. Kohere once told me that if someone inquired at his village for Mr. K’heeree no one had ever heard of him. The same authority told me that in pronouncing the names of native trees the accent is on the first syllable. It is Totara, not T’tarrer-Manuka, not M’nooker-puriri, and so on. Apparently the sports announcers are recruited from the Man-in-the-street. It ceases to annoy me now to hear about George Kneepeer-the word is Napier. But we do not expect such mutilation from news announcers, Surely they go through some test or training in pronouncing Maori words, If the Maori were not such a loveable, happy-go-lucky

fellow he would grab up the nearest taiaha and smite such desecrators to the ground. For example, pronounce "Wae" and "Wai’-there is a difference. There lived on the Coast one Pita Hetana (Peter Satan), two names taken from the Pakeha Book of Truth itself, with glorious disregard for the part played by each in Christian ethics. This is an old story now, but many years ago Britain was presenting New Zealand with a new cruiser. The question of a suitable name for this stately ship of war cropped up. Britain had its Hood and Nelson; why not ¢all our new shipe after Kupe, the great Maori navigator who thrashed around the Pacific before Drake ever set eyes on it? However, someone squelched the idea for the reason that the man-in-the-street would call it the "Kewpie." My eternal thanks go out to the gentleman who saved us from such a naval disaster. Perhaps my pedanticism is running away with me. My great-great-grand-children (we are a long-lived crowd) may live to see the Maori and his language totally absorbed into the Pakeha way of life. In drinking habits they are already a carton or two ahead. I heard a Maori in the King Country ask "He aha te taima mo te Second Express." Instead of the wahine going down to the mudflats, to gather her pipis she gives young Joe a £1 note and he comes back from the store with a couple of tins of pipis, a carton of ice cream and an armful of bottles of green and red liquid (manufactured under the Pure Foods and Drugs Act, artificially coloured, artificially flavoured). Recently I was getting some hints from a Maori friend (he operates a bulldozer) on the technique of planting kumaras., "How many you put in?" "Oh, I thought about a thousand." "Ho, orter do alright, the Maori got plenty of money now." So I intend to paddle my canoe up the Waitemata and hawk them around the Maori wharfies.

IKA

PIRAU

(Tauranga).