MAORI NAMES.
Sir, —If the name Te Kooti is correctly spelled «o, .it must bo pronounced Te Ko-oti —every vowel having full-value. I regret that Mr. W. H. Ross' interesting word, Whenuakite, should be given (he wrong pronunciation after all, by him. No Maori word or syllable ends in a consonantal sound, as he ends it. 1 Neither does any. begin with "f." The "wh" is just our own " wh " as in white or whistle. And Whenuakite—"the land seen"—is just Whe-nu-a-ki-te, every .vowel sound being broad a, e, i, o or u, as taught to our own primer children. I am confident that very soon our school children will mispronounce Maori words never, or hardly ever. It is interesting to note that the Aupouri and Ngapuhi of the North do gel rather close to that "I" sound. Down here it is plain "wh," and farther south, say, at Wanganui, it disappears. Edwin Greensmith. Motumaoho.
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20504, 4 March 1930, Page 12
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154MAORI NAMES. New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20504, 4 March 1930, Page 12
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