THE MAORI TONGUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 238, 7 October 1936, Page 12

THE MAORI TONGUE.

There has been much correspondence lately about the pronounciation of "Maori Names." Now, why should there bo any trouble at all. We are all New Zealanders, but how is it that we cannot speak the Maori language. The great mistake is that we have not been tought Maori in our schools. The Maori child enters school without knowing one word of English and leaves after passing the fifth or sixth standard with two languages to his credit, and speaks English better than many of our New Zealanders do. That is because ho is taught right from A. B. C. and has no excuse not to be able to speak correctly. What is the use of us digging into a language half way through. To understand and to be able, to pronounce Maori, we must start at the beginning. Maori is not Maori without the Maori sounding vowels. Surely one hour could be spared in. the school day's general routine for the Maori language to be taught. There are many well educated Maori men and women who would be only too pleased to be of assistance. I am regularly being obliged (much to my distaste) to ask for tram or bus tickets to Onehaanga and Te Papapa. not Oneliunga and Te Papapa. If I pronounce the names correctly I am not understood and looked at as if I was partly insane. Now, sir, it is a terrible mistake when one has to shy off the correct wa-y of speaking to make oneself understood. I wonder if any of your learned correspondents can explain why the ~wf in Whangamii (not Wanganui) is dropped. Without, the wf it is not a Maori word, and the way some pakehas use it, i.e., Waanganui makes it an abrupt slang word. I expect the wf in Wlianganui was never sounded, so it was dropped altogether, but what about Whangarei? The wf is never sounded, there either, so why not call Wha-ngarei Wangarei. "Oh, no," that looks too much like Wanganui, and wo would get our letters mixed. It all looks like some huge joke to me, and the sooner it is rectified the better, and the only way, as I have said before, is to teach Maori in our schools, and perhaps in a few years hence, we will "hear" and be able to "pronounce" the Maori language in its proper soft flowing manner. A.E.1.0.U.