The complete English-Maori dictionary

Tu Tangata, Issue 4, 1 February 1982, Page 38

The complete English-Maori dictionary

KUPU WHAKAATA/Reviews

The Complete English-Maori Dictionary by Bruce Biggs (Auckland, Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1981) $16.50, 227 pages. Reviewed by Richard Benton

English-speakers and Maorispeakers alike have felt the need for a really comprehensive English-Maori dictionary from the beginnings of regular contact between them. The first serious attempt to meet this need was the English to Maori section of William’s Dictionary of the New Zealand Language, published in 1852. The Williams list contained about 4000 English headwords, and set a pattern for quantity which has been followed by most subsequent dictionaries of this kind, up to and including Bruce Biggs’s English-Maori Dictionary (1965) and Father Ryan’s dictionaries of Modern Maori (1971 and 1974). Despite the large number of speakers of both languages, and the increasing popularity of the study of Maori by English speakers, until 1980 nothing had been published in New Zealand to compare in breadth and depth of coverage with the English-to-Hawaiian section of Mary Pukui and Samuel Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary, whose 1971 edition had 12,500 entries, many of them extensively subdivided. This was all the more astonishing because by 1971 Hawaiian was virtually a dead language where everyday use was concerned, while Maori, comparatively speaking at least, continued to flourish. Computer aid However, in 1968 Professor Biggs had started work on an English to Maori reversal of the seventh edition of Williams’s Maori-English dictionary as a by-product of investigations he was carrying out into the vocabularies of Polynesian languages. This work was done with the help of computers, in the hope that it would thereby be accomplished more quickly, but even so it was twelve years before it was possible to deliver the edited manuscript to the printers. The result is the Complete EnglishMaori Dictionary, whose 227 pages contain the Maori equivalents of some 15,000 English headwords. The author states that the dictionary “should fill an important need in providing an entry from English to Maori”. This is, of course, a gross understatement. In the breadth of its coverage, this book is unique it is the first substantial advance on the English to Maori supplement to the 1852 edition of Williams. Finder-list Like its predecessors, however, this dictionary is basically a finder-list that is, it can be used effectively only in

conjunction with another source of information, such as Williams’ dictionary or a native-speaker of Maori, by people who do not already speak Maori. Without this help, speakers of English only may become confused.

Key word

The complications which arise when one is working on linguistic tasks with computers are endless (I have had much bitter personal experience in this, working on the NZCER basic Maori word list over the last year or two), and it is a tribute to the patience an d editorial skill of Professor Biggs a nd his associates that so many of the “bugs” which must have been encountered have obviously been dealt with. A few, however, managed to survive. The general scheme has been to arrange the English headwords in the form of the key word followed by modifiers (as in the examples with “spit” quoted above). This has not always been done consistently, however. If you are interested in cakes made of fern root, you will have to look in three places to find the words you may need, none of which are cross-referenced: “cake of pounded fern root” (koohere), “fern root, cake of pounded” (meke), “fl a t cake of meal from fern root” (parehe). The reasons for consolidating and separating entries are not always apparent the headword “fish-hook” is followed by a number of general terms, f o r example, but also includes okooko, a highly specific term for a large wooden fish-hook used for catching barracouta; on the other hand, words for “fish-hook inlaid with haliotis shell” merit a separate heading. Diligent search The fact that there are 15,000 headwords may also raise one’s expectations a trifle too high. Names for the kumara, its varieties, stages of growth, and so on, are, for example, spread over twenty-seven separate headings, with a twenty-eighth for “kumara pit”, The last-mentioned heading contains only the Ngapuhi dialect word hahuki, (which, by the way, does not appear among those following a separate entry, thirty-five pages further on, headed “pit for storing kumara”). Nevertheless, there are about as many obviously useful words as in the Hawaiian dictionary, and the needs of the English speaker (or Maori speaker for that matter) wanting a Maori equivalent for a particular English term are likely to be met more often than not, although a diligent search may sometimes be required. The dictionary is not truly “complete” (no dictionary of a living language can be), but it is certainly comprehensive. The Maori orthography follows the

double vowel convention preferred by Professor Biggs (rather than the use of the macron to mark long vowels, as in Williams and most secondary school textbooks). The use of double vowels is carried over into the English headwords, which may cause some confusion “kumara” is spelt “kuumara”, but, as it would normally come at the end of the k’s anyway, this does not matter; however, “manuka” is spelt “maanuka”, and thus will be found before “machine” rather than after “mantis”. “Maori”, however, retains its conventional English spelling, rather than becoming “Maaori”, as might have been expected. Borrowings from English and other foreign languages have been indicated in the text; it is a pity that indigenous Maori words which are not found in Williams have not also been specially identified in some way.

Take issue

Despite the “bugs”, this is a truly remarkable and most welcome addition to Maori scholarship, which will be of immense practical value to anyone seriously interested in the Maori language. The only important point on which I would take issue with the author has nothing to do with the dictionary itself.

In his introduction, commenting on the situation revealed by the survey of the use of Maori which I have been directing, Professor Biggs concludes that “inevitably and at best ... fifty years from now there will be few native speakers among the parents of that day. Their children will learn only English as a mother tongue, and Maori, as a living language, will cease to exist.” This prophecy is well founded, if present trends continue.

However, among the parents of today there are still substantial numbers of native speakers of Maori, and a concerted effort by them could, in fact, ensure that the decline of Maori as a living language is arrested and reversed.

Buy this dictionary, if you haven’t already done so. It is sturdily produced, and will thus last you a long time. It is most unlikely that a more comprehensive dictionary will be produced within the next twelve years this one has really taken 161 years to put in its appearance; it is the first truly comprehensive English-Maori dictionary to be produced since the publication of the Maori-English dictionary compiled by Professor Samuel Lee in 1820.

On reflection, computers may have their uses after all. We should be grateful that Professor Biggs took the opportunity offered to him in Hawaii twelve years ago, which enabled him to present us with this valuable and, currently, quite indispensible reference work.