PRONUNCIATION PITFALLS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 129, 3 June 1933, Page 10

PRONUNCIATION PITFALLS

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Your valued, contributor, Mr. Johaunes C. Andersen, writing very interestingly on "The Weta at Home" in your edition of last Saturday, May 27, states as follows: "The name is pronounced wet-a, the 'a' like the second 'a' in 'aha'! but not so long drawn out." This I take to mean (and Others have done the same) that the word is pronounced with both vowels short, and rhyming with the first part of our English "metaphysics." Confessing _to Only a limited knowledge of Maori, but accustomed to a life-long use «f the word with both vowels long, I turned up Williams's Dictionary of the Maori Language, 1917 edition, and found there, two words spelt "weta." The first, with both vowels long, makes a good rhyme with our English word "data;" or perhaps better with the lah-de-dah pronunciation of "waiter" (waitah) with a not- too long "ah," is the name of the insect under discussion. The second word, with both vowels short, means "dirt, excrement." Here, then, we have an interesting example of the numerous pitfalls that beset the .students of the Maori language.—l am, etc., G.N.S.