A CORRESPONDENT HITS OUT.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 907, 29 August 1910, Page 4

A CORRESPONDENT HITS OUT.

MAORI WORDS AND ENGLISH . VERSIONS. The mispronunciation of Maori placenames is the burden of a correspondent's', complaint, who. blames the public schools for what ho terms "the vile mutilation ' of a solt-spoken and beautiful language." The trouble seems tobbye y - VTitcs our' correspondent, .that New Zealand children jaro taught almost nothing about the manner in which they should pronounce the names, of the places of their homeland, and in a general sense they make a "fearful hash" of oven ordinary words. Consonants are raced.for as if they were winning-posts, and whole syllables aro dropped as it' ,tl!oy had been submitted to a surgical.'operation. . We have joked at«the Englishman who said "Pet-one" and the Christchurch man.who transformed Te Aute, into To Orty, but we ourselves make ' errors almost as ridiculous. Ko-to-rua is frequently termed "Rot-erua," . "Ro-to-ma-hana," "Rot-a-mahana'" while Ngahauranga has nowbeen clipped down to "Narauga." The other day a" man proceeding northwards on the train passed . through Otaiie. "What ; ,lrishman," he,.,.asked, "is this place', named'' after?"" Other wonderful mispronunciations are "Wairapa" for Wairarapa; "Taraneeka" for Tauhcrihikau, "Mungamaho" for Mangamahoe," "Eketahooner" for Eketahuna, "Ohingiti" for Ohingaiti, "Waiuru" for Waiouru, "Porryrua," for Porirua, Eobmerunga" for Euarnahanga, "Enaheen" for Euahine,."Piatooa" for Pahiahia, and a scoro of other names. Our correspondent ' suggests that something might be done in' the way of improvement if the railway time-table contained the proper pronunciation of railway stations spelt phonetically, in addition to the correct spelling, but this seems rather Quixotic.