Toe-paw

As with any colonizing language, local names can look pretty intimidating.  Tonopah and Roanoke come to mind.   Yet, generally, if you know the phonetics of the colonizing language, Spanish and English for Tonopah and Roanoke, respectively, one can pronounce (or nearly pronounce) the name.  It should be noted that Tonopah is not Spanish, and Roanoke is not English, these are Native American words written using Latin letters, and European languages.  The same cannot be said of the English created/derived Māori language.

I live in the city of Taupō, on the shores of Lake Taupō, with a population of Kiwis who generally refuse to pronounce the name correctly.  I find it inexcusable that people know the correct pronunciation, yet refuse to use it just to be culturally insensitive.  In addition to purposeful cultural insensitivity, I discovered recently that many people seem to lack the knowledge of how to pronounce the word in general.  I made this discovery recently chatting with a woman who had grown up in Taupō.  The conversation went something like this:

"You grew up in Taupō"?
"Yeah, people are always surprised when I say that."
"It doesn't seem like you meet many people from here."
"I think lots of people move away because there isn't much here for young people."
"So, why don't you pronounce it correctly"?
"I don't know, I just never got around to changing it.  I should."
"I don't understand why more people don't, lots of folk look at me like I'm crazy when I say Toe-paw."
"That's because you're saying it wrong."
"Really, I was told it is toe (pointing at my foot), paw, like an animal foot.  Toe-paw."
"No, keep the toe, but say poor, rather than paw."
"Say what"?
"Poor, like you don't have any money, Toe-poor."
"I don't think there is an r in the word."
"No, but that is how people say it."

It turns out that people say it many incorrect ways.  If you are curious about how it is mispronounced, and how to correctly pronounce it, the tourism board actually made a video to help.  It is totally corny, but I think it gets the point across, Toe-paw.  Admittedly I speak with a strong Western US accent, which means I enunciate the words of the English language, which does confuse Kiwis a bit (in Kiwi, wit=wit, wit=wet, wit=wheat, etc.), but Taupō is pronounced Toe-paw, pretty simple.

The interesting bit about Māori is that it was created at Cambridge University, is Latin letter based, yet written Māori does not use English phonetics, or seemingly, any phonetics at all.  This tells one a couple of things.  First, there is a reason it is the Oxford English Dictionary, and not the Cambridge English Dictionary.  Second, that the English love to make languages that are difficult to learn owing to a plethora of exceptions to rules.

The first thing to learn is that wh makes the f sound.  So in Māori, who would be foo (ignoring vowel sounds for now).  This can make for some giggles because many words are spelled Whaka-, for example, the coastal town of Whakatane (faka tawny).  Next, ai is y.  This will be familiar to Americans who dream of going to Waikiki Beach in Hawaii.  These two tricks put you off and running.

Unfortunately for English speakers, the macron (the bar over the vowel) indicates that one should hold the vowel sound.  Kiwis will tell you it indicates that you make it "long."  It has been a long time since Hooked on Phonics, but if I recall correctly, the macron, makes a vowel "hard" or "long," meaning A not ah, or I not ih.  What they mean by long here, is that you hold it for an extra beat.  I think this would generally be done with an h in English, maybe a couple of them if you really wanted to prove the point. Ah, or ahh, or ahhhhhhhhhh would be ā.  So Māori is pronounced Mah-ori (when I was being instructed on this matter the r sounded almost like the Spanish rr.  I am not sure if that was intentional, or simply to illustrate how to say the word to a Yankee), not May-ori.  From Māori, one also gleans that o is essentially pronounced o, and thus ō would be oh.  You can listen to the Māori vowels at Maorilanguage.net, where indeed, o is pronounced O.

Those of you who want consistent vowel sounds will recognize the issue here.  If Māori is Mah-ori, then Toe-paw would be Topā, maybe Tōpā, but not Taupō.  Alas, Taupō is pronounced Toe-paw, and it is challenging to figure out the correct pronunciation of Māori words that do not follow the rules, or rules that are complicated.

Another Kiwi piped in during the conversation about the the pronunciation of Taupō, that the word is not English, but Māori, so one could not expect English phonetics.  Further, she pointed out, that there were lots of local dialects, so one written language could not possibly cover all of the Māori words adequately.  Interesting that the English were able to do it for the Eastern Seaboard; the French for the Hudson Bay and Great Lakes area; and the Spanish for the Southwest US, Latin America, and half of South America.  Thus, the Spanish were able to apply their phonetics, albeit not perfectly, to the native languages of on the order of 5 million square miles, but one written language could not be created to cover the dialects of two islands that cover one hundred-thousand square miles.  In numbers, Spanish was sufficient for 5,000,000 square miles, while written Māori is insufficient for 100,000 square miles.

Kiwis, I find, are always piping up with this kind of wisdom.  Whereby, they come up with some explanation for why they cannot do something correctly, without understanding that every other nation on the planet deals with these same issues at a grander scale.  The effect is that when you think about what they just said, it makes them seem even more feeble and sad than you had previously thought.  When there simply is no explanation, they, beaming with pride, will defend it as how it is done here.

The pronunciation of this little town is a great place to begin to look at this little country.  Travelers and travel guides will make claims about this country like, "it is like the US 50 years ago."  Kiwis will brag about their country with things like "the possum is the only animal that Greenpeace says is okay to kill for fur." (I have not verified that claim.)  Kids who grew up in downtown London will marvel at the "wilderness" they find in managed forests, and clear-cut farmlands.  A question starts to emerge though.

"Are these good things"?

Over the next month or two, I will try to find the answer.