Omniglot - the blog

According to a news item I found today, it’s possible to study the Maori language at the University of Hawaii. The Maori courses, which are taught at the Manoa campus, are popular with Hawaiian students, who are interesting in Maori because it has many similarities with the Hawaiian language and they are curious to find out what it’s like. They are also interested in other Polynesian languages.

Another article I came across today compares the Cree, Hualapai, Maori, and Hawaiian indigenous language programs. The writer describes common components and problems of implementation, and concludes that successful programs need to link language and culture, need written teaching materials, and need community support and parental involvement.

Hualapai, a.k.a Walapai, is spoken in parts of Arizona, in case you’re wondering.

This post was inspired by an email I received today from someone who wanted to know why the f sound in Māori is written wh, as in Whangarei.

According to a number of sites I found, Māori was first written down by missionaries who had little or no training in phonetics or phonology, and there was considerable variation in the spelling systems they came up with. The sound represented by wh was originally a voiceless bilabial fricative /ɸ/ (p\), though in some dialects, particularly in the North Shore area, it was a voiceless labial-velar fricative /ʍ/ (W). It was written w by some, and wh, f or v by others.

These days, many people pronounce wh as /f/, or sometimes /h/, /w/ or /ʍ/ (W).

Sources:
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=107120
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-RogEarl-t1-back-d2.html
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-KohStor-t1-back-d3.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cultures/new-zealand-faq/part2/section-10.html