From: renzland@govonca.gov.on.ca (Peter Renzland) Subject: Long Vowels: Macrons or Doubling (Was Re: Paakehaa ...) Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 22:20:58 GMT Michael Witbrock writes: >I believe that typing double vowels (which are different phonemes from >the single ones in Maaori) is the accepted convention, just as German >uses an e following a vowel to represent an umlaut. Indeed. The first thing to remember is that the Maaori language has significant vowel length. Many English language speakers are apt to disregard this fact. English also has significant vowel length, (ship - sheep, foot - food), but English vowel sounds are more complex and long vowels sound different from short vowels, not just longer: (breath - breathe, sock - soak). In Maaori, there are only 5 vowel sounds (a,e,i,o,u). There are three common ways to express vowel length in writing: 1. doubling 2. macron 3. not at all Proponents of (3) tend not to care much about the Maaori language. They either "can't" hear the difference in vowel length (although they will certainly hear the difference between "beach" and "bitch" in English), or they can't remember whether the vowel is long or short, and they won't look it up in a dictionary. They may say: "It's clear from the context", or "Maori is not a written language", or "It looks awkward". The major problem with this method is that if you see a word in writing, you won't know how to pronounce it, unless you speak the language well and can guess from the context. It certainly isn't suitable for teaching. Macron proponents recognise that vowel length matters, but consider it somewhat secondary. Macrons are easily overlooked when reading, or omitted when writing. I have _textbooks_ on the Maaori language, using the macron method, with numerous ommitted and misplaced macrons. Doubling is the oldest method of indicating vowel length. It was used, naturally, by early Maaori writers. It can also be considered "phonetically correct", inasmuch as the long vowels have evolved from elided intervening consonants, along the lines of: hawaiki -> hawai'i -> hawaii (The "'" in hawai'i is a glottal stop.) (This example is a bit sloppy, but it'll do:-) By the way, doesn't anyome want to know what "maaori" means? Another related question might be "What do we call indigenous North Americans"? (Indians, Natives, First Nations). Sometimes someone asks "What do they call themselves?". And then we find that they don't necessarily have a label that we might like: They might either refer to themselves in a way that is too specific to our liking, such as "Cree", or "Te Arawa", or too broad, such as "Anishnabe", "Inuit", or "Maaori". Anishnabe and Inuit mean, roughly, "people", and maaori means "common, ordinary". As in "wai maaori" = "fresh water". Kia ora, me arohanui! -- Peter Renzland Je danse, donc je suis.