Posts by mark taslov
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Okay, let's not get carried away here. We're talking about place names in a colonised country with a history of land confiscations and usurpation of sovereign rights.
Well what exactly is being offered as compensation in this case? an H? I'd take the freedom to show my patch over an 'h' any day of the month. We're called 'The billygoats' if anyone's interested in joining and we're bad as live spelled backward.
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And when do we get to rename the two islands? Currently they sound as if they had been named by the cat in the hat.
p. 1873
"All ready to put up the names for my islands.
I'll name one island North and the other South island,
said Maui the Maori with spear clasped in hand,
there's none better than I at naming lands" -
it's true.
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A clearly Maori word - albeit misspelt - is not an English word...
I'd argue it clearly became an English word over a century ago. The same was as Italy is an English word. I'm in favor of Wanganouille
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it applies to places like Matakaea/Shag Point or Mawhera/Greymouth,
not to a spelling mistake in Maori (spelling mistakes in English are another matter altogether - there is a long tradition of mispelling in English, and an equal tradition in keeping spellings that bear little resemblance to how the placename/family name/whatever is now pronounced.)So by that rational, In keeping with Law's duel name assertion, couldn't Whanganui be the Maori name and Wanganui the English name as a loan word, I assume it was an Englishman who originally fucked it up.
there is a long tradition of mispelling in English, and an equal tradition in keeping spellings that bear little resemblance to how the placename/family name/whatever is now pronounced.)
I'm reminded of when Bond went undercover as someone or other St. John Smith/SinJin Smythe in 'A view to a Kill'
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It's happening...omc...
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Mark, this is attracting interest precisely because of its place in the wider discourse about race.
Yes, and that's never a bad thing, I guess I should really celebrate the fact that the cost of changing a plethora of signs etc. is cheaper than introducing 2 years compulsory Te Reo education for New Zealanders.
Roma fell amid a debate as to whether to go with the name Aquae Sulis or Aqua Sulis for the city of Bath. Amid the clamour, engineers failed to consider the effect lead pipes may have on all the MC's brains.
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Yes I understnd that Sacha, but as I just mentioned, this is not an argument about altering the language, it's an argument to change a name which is was derived from a language, it's a crucial distinction.
Living in Wanganui I was partial to the odd bit of Te Reo education via Sesame street, but I'd be lying if I said that was the only language we spoke red necking about the place.As far as I'm aware the management of Te Reo is not under the dirigisme of the Ministery for Land Information. But place names are.
The general impression I get is that New Zealand must have recently become a problem free paradise for so much time and money to be spent debating superfluities such as this. What next?
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Unless you're arguing that it's all pointless and that any 'authentic' Te Reo would require the wholesale abandonment of written language. And I rather think Maori should be the judge of the wisdom of that.
Yes, pretty much exactly what I was driving at when I said...
ie. to the extent that the potential development of a unique written Maori language has been essentially annexed out of contention as a viable development.
Matters are made all the more complicated by the fact that the alphabet being used and the very concept of spelling itself is on loan from other languages. Beyond that I am a little worried at the racial undertone to your comments that a language be the exclusive property of a race or ethnic group. Not that I have an issue with maori controlling the language, but I hazard a guess that this dirigisme should not be the domain of the Geographic board nor any other Government department.
However in this case no one is attempting to change the spelling of a language, but considerable effort is being issued to change the name of a place. A place governed by a democratically elected government in an allegedly democratic country.
The idea that a language remain the exclusive property of its originators and those originators alone can alter or adapt that language is a ridiculous argument to have in English. But it does ready the question, Seeing that New Zealand is essentially an anglicised society, is the word 'Wanganui' exclusively a Maori word? When we use the word Kungfu are we insulting or showing a lack of respect to (the) Chinese by not spelling and pronouncing it gongfu, is something wrong here? Many Chinese will argue it doesn't make much of a difference because the word is neither officially spelt gongfu or kungfu but is in fact written 功夫 anything else is just an approximation of Chinese, not Chinese itself. This is just the way language rolls. So it's an interesting to observe how much mana the roman alphabeticed version of Maori has aquired with 'leading' Maori like Dr Sharples.
Which brings us back to...
Unless you're arguing that it's all pointless
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and Some more cultural Imperialism..
I think in this case Sam though it is complicated, as in "their own freaking words" the 'their' is who? who owns a language? Those who identify themselves as Maori? Is it in the blood in that those with a greater percentage of maori blood should have a greater say? Should Maori serving in the New Zealand Government have a greater say by virtue of their social standing? Or Should the maori with greater mana on the marae have greater influence in this decision? If this were a Debate on losing an L from Wellington and had Wellington twice voted to lose the L and the Queen was against this, who should make the final decision, the people of Welington or the owner of the English ours is but a derivation of?