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| Thread ID: 121905 | 2011-11-20 22:33:00 | Maori Television | Ulsterman (12815) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1244562 | 2011-11-24 07:19:00 | Watch live TV on any Android device - Download the free Yamgo TV app NOW! Venus TV (market.android.com) |
asad (16634) | ||
| 1244563 | 2011-11-24 07:37:00 | I think some of you missed what I was getting at. They assigned letters to sounds, the letters should be thought of as non english symbols. Because they are english letters you tend to think of them in terms of the english sound associated with them, but when the language is Maori the english sounds have no bearing on the word. They did not spell the words phonetically, which is when you spell a word how it sounds using english (in the case of english speakers) they attempted, however successfully, to create an alphabet and language using the nearest equivalent english letters.. Written Maori is a completely different language to written english that just happens to use the same characters to express it. I don't entirely get it myself but I'm not a linguist. It always puzzled me for example why the Maori "i" wasn't just called "e" as it seems to be the closest vowel sound. I'm finding it difficult to explain this so it makes sense, so I think maybe this is my last try :) Well the problem with that argument is that the Maori didn’t have a written language so the linguists had to translate their Speech into English Writing. Therefore, as an example, when they said Whangarei it was spelt that way deliberately so as the start of the word was NOT to be confused with an “F”. Had the Maori of the time pronounced it Fongarei then you can bet your bottom dollar it would have been written Fongarei. I think there are about 130 official languages around the world and for the most part the translations are pretty good. I simply don’t believe they could have made such a botch of the Maori language and it’s taken so long to discover. More like Academics trying to look smart. ;) |
B.M. (505) | ||
| 1244564 | 2011-11-24 12:44:00 | Dugi, you're not making alot of sense really. They had nothing else to go on, so must have tried to spell the words as they sounded. You cant just take a guess at it, there must have been a guide, and the only guide was the way it was spoken (by Maori, or by someone who could speak it). Pronunciation of many vowels have a different sound depending on what they are preceeded by etc. In modern Maori, the "i" sounds like an "e" as in fee, me, see, what would be interesting is to hear how the European said "Maori" 200 years ago, they may have pronounced it quite different. (probably called them a lot of other things too, but we wont go there :) ) Now, getting back to the "F".... even if they used the closest thing they could find to sound like a "F" in English, wouldn't that have been "PH" and not "WH"? (example: photo, phantom). But if you have a good look, I dont think you will find any "PH" in Maori either, why, because there is no "f" sound in Maori. I think the "f" sound and maybe even the "i" is a modern pronunciation made up by a group of Maori academics in more modern times, in the 1980's as paulw says. |
Iantech (16386) | ||
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