WILD IRISHMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 11

WILD IRISHMAN

Sir.-I sympathise with "Sundowner" writing in your issue of November 1; I agree that matagouri is a verbal bastard; but that it "gets near to the universal pronunciation" I doubt. Meeting a word you don’t know, if you take it for English and find -ou- in it, it may call for the vowel sound of "pour," or "dough," or "douce," or "doubt," or "tough"; what guide have you as to which is intended? Taking the word for Maori you must give it the vowel sound of "dough," but sound both the o and the u distinctly. But then you do not achieve the accepted pronunciation. I think we can do better than that: matagowry or matagauri. Either of these will at least warn the speaker off "matagoori." Matagowry is, of course, hideous to look at; but read as English there is not much doubt about how it should sound, and that is the main thing; and it is so obviously not Maori that nobody is likely to try to Maorify it. In matagauri there are traps; pronounced as English it would end in something gory; and though it looks like Maori, its first half must not be pronounced Maoriwise. A Maori word "mata-" might rhyme with "rata" (both vowels long), or its vowels might be those of "haka" and "butter"; the spelling gives no clue. Actually in this word they are those of English ‘"matter’-and the sound of "a" in "cat" is one never used in Maori, never intended by the Maori ‘"a" and not capable of being exactly indicated on transliteration into the Maori alphabet. So please to offer "Sundowner" matagowrv. with mv compliments.

A.E.

C.

. (Wellington).