Getting Māori place names right is all about respect

Thursday, 26 July 2018

How to say some of New Zealand's most commonly mispronounced place names

Sarah Moore is taking part in a 12-week te reo course in an effort to show her irāmutu (niece) her whole family values her Māori heritage. This is the second instalment.

OPINION: We're belting out the beginner te reo Māori chart topper Mā is White really, really… badly. Even our teacher told us our singing was 'sad'.

We've got some serious a capella going on from one corner of the room; the rest of us are bumbling through songs we haven't sung since primary school – or in my case, Girl Guides.

I wasn't expecting to sing but there's no denying it's a catchy way to familiarise yourself with some of the te reo basics. It's our first class and we're korero-ing colours, introducing ourselves, practicing our greetings and goodbyes, and getting started with numbers.

Sarah Moore is learning te reo through a 12-week course at AUT.

* Te reo hits the rail in Auckland

* Forecast: bad pronunciation with a side of bungles**

We're learning the importance of macrons and how they affect pronunciation – essential when differentiating between eating cake (keke) and eating armpit (kēkē).

It's a refresher for some students, while others are absolute newbies.

There's an awkwardness in the air, entirely familiar to anyone who has ever been an adult student making new classroom 'friends'.

Sarah Moore and her niece, Emelia Mary Ngahuia Moore.

But we're united by our interest in te reo Māori and feel like the chosen ones when we're told that all Auckland University of Technology (AUT) te reo courses are at full capacity, with more than 600 students enrolled this semester.

It's waiata time again: A Haka Mana Para Tawa Ngawha (sung to the tune of Stupid Cupid, and performed much more eloquently by Anika Moa).

The goal? Correct pronunciation of consonant and vowel combinations. The song is irritatingly catchy and actually pretty fun to sing once you get warmed up. Definitely one to add to my Spotify playlist.

Next up is place names, and we collectively repeat a long list of them from across Aotearoa. This issue seems to have struck a chord with readers – following last week's column, one commented that 'this obsession with 'correct' pronunciation of place names is absurd'.

It's interesting, because I never saw correct pronunciation as anything other than a way to pay my respects to those who were here long before me.

Similarly, I made an effort to pronounce place names the way the Japanese and French did when I resided in their respective countries – not with a faux French or Japanese accent, just with the emphasis in the right spots, the softening of consonants where necessary. To be fair, this was much less about respect and much more about a desire to be understood.

Place names are also one of the only ways to practice pronunciation as we go about our daily lives. I think it's fair to say that for the majority of us, our exposure to te reo is limited to what we see as we travel (on maps and those Air New Zealand quizzes), what we hear on TV weather reports, or through radio stations incorporating te reo into their broadcasts.

Lastly, class finished as it started: with a karakia (prayer).

Upon leaving we were encouraged to head out and practice our foray into te reo Māori in the 'real world'. And therein lies the challenge.

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