THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23463, 30 March 1938, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer

Just to prevent anyone, from radio announcers to our own authority, becoming too didactic on the pronunciation of Waikouaiti, we must mention the message which reached us after our previous ruling on this important question. This came by telephone from a sage on the hills, and read as follows: While, in 1893, he was engaged m conversation with an old Maori, he was informed that one sucked in the breath on the final “i ’’ of Waikouaiti, thus producing a quite indescribable sound. We trust that this will be of some assistance to the purists, to whom the common or garden pronunciation of Maori does not appeal. For ourself, “ Wakawyt ” will suffice, leaving us with our breath intact for breathing, imbibing and other necessary functions. Yet it is due to our own tame expert to allow him his prejudice for the correct treatment of Maori place names. Plaintively he protests their mutilation, recalling as an instance a visit he paid a short time ago to a pioneers' gathering at Wai-kou-a-iti which convinced him that the greatest butchers of the Maori tongue are those who settled in New Zealand when they could hear the language spoken at its best. With a companion,' he had scrambled over the flanks of Mount Matainaka (all the a’s broad, as in “ mama ”) recounting the history and traditions of the district, before going down to the gathering. The earliest settler arose. “ Well, friends. I’ve lived at Wakawyt for a good many years in the shadow of old Matanak (making it rhyme with “Satanic”). . . . And that was all our friend wanted to hear. Perhaps, he confided, it is just as well that the Lake Mahinerangi is being renamed Lake Luella.

He proceeds: Consciously or otherwise, we all persist in distorting our Maori place names. We know that the Maori language has no “ 1,” yet we have never called Lake Waihola by any other name. The residents of “ Kaik’ra ” still look up when the radio announcer carefully enunciates "Kaikorai,” “ Matanak." “ Wakalip.” “Waimahak”—all with short, hard “ a’s ’’—are a few examples of the tendency to clip the last vowel essential to every Maori word. Even the destination of the buses is an incorrect “ Kaik.” Supreme, however, is the general appellation of the little settlement of Mihiwaka—- “ Mickey Walker.” One way out of the difficulty would be to re-name it George Walker; and since Mount Matainaka seems to offer similar trouble, it could become Mount Lofty Blomfield. But the lingual problems that present themselves when one is dealing in a strange language are interminable. Let gentle readers sharpen their faculty for French upon the tale of the bearded Englishman who was hungry and went into a restaurant in Paris to get a meal. Englishman: Je suis femme. Waiter: Pas possible: Monsieur est joli garcon. Englishman: J’ai femme. Waiter: Monsieur est mairc Et comment se portent Madame et le petit bebe? Englishman (desperately)' Je suis fameaux. Waiter: Je la crois bien. Monsieur en a bien Tair. Which goes to remind one of the Englishman who wished to advise a French waiter that he did not like the condition of the ham served to him and remarked petulantly, “Je suis.” We recall without pride a small contretemps which occurred when we presented ourself at the bus terminus near the Gare St.-Lazare seeking certain information. In our best copy-book French we addressed a line of amiable bus-con-ductors sitting for a whiff of cigarette smoke beside their line of drab chariots. Is it that they could be so gracious, we asked, as to direct us to the autobus which would convey our person with comfort and celerity to Montmartre? But yes, m’sieu, it is a pleasure, they replied. All one need do is to place oneself upon the platform of the bus bearing the direction sign Ah-ee. A thousand thanks, we said, glancing at the line of buses, and blanching —er, the auto-bus Ah-ee? Yes, m’sieu, ah-ee. Ah, so many thanks . . . mais ah-efe? And it required an obliging busman’s finger, levelled towards a plain black and white direction board to enable us at last to choose the correct bus—that, need we blushingly admit it, with the simple symbol “Al.” We observe, by the way, that the presence of pedestrians in Dunedin has been noticed at last by the South Island Motor Union, though not altogether favourably Said a speaker: There is nothing in the civilised world to equal it. Pedestrians will not move off the road on Friday nights, and they have been known to spit on cars There is no control of pedestrians. Surely the police could remove pedestrians from the road: the Act passed by Mr Semple has been absolutely ignored Why delegate to the police, we might ask. a duty which the motorists have undertaken so successfully during past years that there are only a few left to be removed? And in the normal course of events it is more likely to be an ambulance man than a policeman who will make himself responsible for their departure. The pedestrian is, of course, doomed to extinction. One willingly admits the charge that there is nothing in the civilised world like him; or that there soon won’t be. But the conditions of his existence have precluded it. Hounded and harried from lamp-post to safety zone, with the baying of the klaxon searing forever, ominously through his head, what chance has he ever had to embrace the civilising influences of spark plugs and accelerators? A mere whiff of their enlightening presence—an aromatic odour of petrol lurking in the night air—and he is scuttling off, poor startled boast, to join his quivering mate in some suburban lair. Can nothing be done to save him? We hear some of you sentimental Semples asking And the answer. No! Not as long as the petrol lax, the tyre tax, the registration fee. the drunk-in-charge fine, and the rest of the fees subscribed by the motorist, to the support of the traffic departments, the Customs office, the magisterial courts, and even to the highways of the land, are retained The pedestrian’s is a useless and unprofitable pelt, of value only to an occasional widow to convert into satin for her second bridal trousseau; but the skin of the motorist, if thick, still yields plenty of that good golden fleece to which governments used to cut their capes. If it is capers that the Government is now cutting instead, that is another story, best told by Adam.

Sporting note. “ It was once stated by a prominent English sportsman that the length of a walking stick did not exist between the best and the worst rider in England.” But what a difference even the length of a nose can makel A girls' cricket club is reported to have trespassed on a city water reserve at Whare Flat. Perhaps they considered it a good place for ducks.