this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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What percentage of NZ could actually pronounce it though? It's an absolute mouthful.
Papa-kanga-horo-horo. Eight syllables, pretty straightforward. My Māori is pretty trash, but after one read of it and a handful of times saying it out loud it's pretty simple.
My advice to anyone complaining about it is to just say it out loud a few times. I guarantee that by the time you've said it to the moving company, the power company, the insurance company and your mum, you'll have it locked down.
It also has the added bonus of being completely unique, so there's no chance of your ambulance being dispatched to park terrace on the other side of town while you're choking on park road.
It's definitely a lot easier when you break it up like that.
Yeah, it is much easier when you read it and then say what you read.
Yeah, Māori is actually pretty easy to pronounce if you break it apart. There are only five vowel sounds and they don't change depending on context like with English. The only downside is that names are often comprised of several words smooshed together, so you have to pick it apart yourself the first time you read it.
If I can say shmutzfangmatten then I can say Papakangahorohoro. I bet half the people complaining wouldn't be if they were trying to name it for a (hypothetical) historical German doormat factory instead of giving it a perfectly cromulent Maori name (I think something to do with earthquakes?).
I definitely couldn't pronounce shmutzfangmatten though, and I doubt most of NZ could either. I also think there would be a similar push back if you tried to name a street that.
Kinda a ridiculous hypothetical to be honest.
I don't know man. It would just take a couple of tries to get it and then get used to it like pretty much anything new?
Honestly I've never cared what the name of the street I lived on was or how long it is.
what? it's three different sounds
Get over yourself, we can al do Ngāruawāhia well enough cant we?
I'm 50 this coming birthday, had little Te Reo at small white town NZ schools, lived in the UK for 1/3 of my adult life, and would have little issue with that as my street address
I'd wager a very big chunk of the population would misspell it though.
with the eye's on it in the media and people like you getting upset over it - I doubt it, unless you/they are deliberately being obtuse
That is a spectacularly out of touch comment to be honest, not everyone spends hours reading the news and arguing about it with strangers on the Internet, you know.
oh my god - just give up. Its not that hard a name to spell when we have places like Foveaux Strait, Balmacewen, Corstorphine just to name a few non Te Reo name that are 'hard to spell' or are a 'mouthful'
Those are also a mouthful, and are probably a hassle for the people that live there. I don't see how that makes creating a headache for these people acceptable?
How is using our only codified written language a headache - really?