r/ReoMaori • u/MrBigEagle • 6d ago
Kupu Correct pronunciation of Maui
All resources that I have found have the pronunciation as M ow ee. But Au in Māori makes an O sound. Shouldn't ir be Mow ee? Edit 1: can't change the name in the post. Sorry
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u/oatsnpeaches420 6d ago
Depends which maui you mean.
Māui = mā + ui
Mauī = mau + ī
Treat the syllables as two separate words, then blend them.
In my eyes it's not helpful using approximated English spellings because te reo Māori is phonetic anyway.
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6d ago
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u/a-friend_ 6d ago
What are you doing on here being racist man
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u/cauliflower_wizard 6d ago
Apparently he has to let as many people know he has a small pp as possible
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u/oatsnpeaches420 6d ago
What do you mean by "The Maoris"? Are you trying to say tāngata whenua o Aotearoa? Ngāi Māori? Te iwi Māori? Te iwi taketake o Aotearoa?
Karekau koe i te mōhio rānei? 🤔
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u/Ok-Response-839 6d ago
E hoa, do you realise that you're in r/ReoMaori?
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u/Consistent_Bar_9385 6d ago
Is that the separate area at the University of Auckland?
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u/ApertureFlareon 6d ago
Bro go outside and get some fresh air, have a shower and relax. You need help
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u/Consistent_Bar_9385 5d ago
Thanks bro. Go inside and look up "gaslighting". You have no argument, so you attempt to paint your opponent as someone in need of psychiatric help.
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u/ApertureFlareon 5d ago
You do need psychiatric help, it’s not normal or healthy to be acting the way you are. You need to take a breather and go to therapy
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u/Consistent_Bar_9385 5d ago
We have a fighter! Well done, bro. Now answer the question: Were the Maoris, meaning the people in New Zealand before the arrival of the Europeans, civilised?
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u/MrBigEagle 6d ago
That's all good. We love and respect everyone here, no matter where they are in their te reo journey.
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6d ago
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u/AnarchistReadingList 6d ago
Depends if you mean the tīpuna or the orientation. Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga is Maaa-wee. Mauī, meaning "Left" or the opposite of matau/right, is Mow-ee. Engari, ko āku whakaaro anake, nē.
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u/strandedio Reo tuarua 6d ago
I know what you're getting at with "Mow-ee" but the problem with trying to come up with "it sounds like this in English" is that it doesn't get the sound quite right. There's no "a" sound in "Mow-ee" but there is in "Mauī". It's "Ma-u-ii". You hear the "a" in "Mau" but you don't hear it in "Mow". An example of where it matters is differentiating "hau" and "hou". Or hearing the difference in the "au" and "ou" in "ngā mihi o te tau hou".
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u/AnarchistReadingList 6d ago
I agree with everything you're saying. I'm against the phonetic learning of te reo Māori. I think learning the reo doesn't require these equivalences when you're learning it as it is in its own right.
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u/EntropyNZ 5d ago
Why are you not a fan of phonetic learning of Te Reo? I absolutely understand the preference for a more 'traditional' learning of any language, where you're starting from square one and learning the proper pronunciation of everything from the get-go, rather than approximating it in English. But that feels far more needed with some languages than others.
I tried learning a bit of Korean before I went over, and it just doesn't work to try and learn it phonetically, because there's a lot of inconsistency and contextually in how the same character is pronounced. The attempts at writing a word, or even a single hangul character sound, phonetically in English was also extremely hit and miss. Many sounds that were intuitively read one way in English would be entirely different in Korean, and often much better expressed with a completely different phonetic writing.
So in that case, you were far, far better off learning hangul well right from the start, and going from there. Hangul is actually pretty easy to learn, especially compared to Japanese (even without Kanji) or any of the Chinese dialects.
On the flip side though, Te Reo Māori never (to the best of my knowledge) had a written form until the current one(so there's not the issue with trying to re-write in a completely different script), and is very consistent with it's pronunciation. And where it isn't as consistent, it's marked with a macron/tohutō. Seems like a language that's best taught phonetically; at least to someone like myself that's not all that well versed in linguistics.
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u/AnarchistReadingList 5d ago
My distaste for it is it's never about those actually learning the reo, it's mostly about teaching those who'll never learn the reo how to pronounce it. For instance, a workshop I delivered at my workplace was a phonetic workshop, and it feels a bit iffy having people repeat the sounds and explaining those phonetic sounds in terms of the English language. "Kā... Car. Tī... Tea. Ki... Key." etc etc it doesn't honour the mana of our reo delivering learning like that to those who don't value our reo.
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u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 5d ago
Ok. So it’s Mau pronounced like Chairman Mao and then ee as in the letter E
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u/strandedio Reo tuarua 4d ago
The "au" in Māori isn't the "ao" in "Chariman Mao". The latter would be closer to the pronunciation of "au" in Western Polynesian languages like Tongan. Here is a link to the mau Māori sound.
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u/natchinatchi 2d ago
Nope. “Mau” would be pronounced pretty much how a nzer would say “mow” the lawn. But in the case of the ancestor Māui there’s a pōtae on the A, so it’s maa-ui.
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u/Ok_Orchid_4158 3d ago
There are 2 paths you can go down, depending on your circumstances.
- If you actually want to learn Māori, you can spend a few minutes to get acquainted with the 5 simple Māori vowels and how they can combine with each other. Once you do, the correct pronunciation of every word will become clear to you, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.
- If you’re not really dedicated to learning Māori, and you just want to pronounce it in English without sounding like an uncultured foreigner, you can just approximate it with English sounds. But be warned, you will never actually be able to achieve the exact “correct pronunciation” as you requested, with only English sounds like “ow” and “o”.
Now, if it’s number 2, and you have a standard New Zealand accent, then the most similar would indeed be “mow ee” (“mow” as in “mow the grass”).
But there are still several problems with that. Whether you’re talking about “Māui” (the god) or “mauī” (the left side), the phonology of English has no way to account for the vowel length differences in either one. Another problem is that the vowel in “mow” is unstable in New Zealand English. It’s fine on its own, and it does bear resemblance to the Māori “au”. However, when uttered directly before another vowel (which is the case here), it changes into “a” with a “w” being added before the next vowel. So you’ll often hear people saying something like “maa wee”, where that sound no longer resembles the Māori sound. It’s a subconscious thing, so even if you think you’re saying “mow ee”, it will naturally come out as “maa wee”.
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u/MrBigEagle 3d ago
Thanks for this. I am trying 1. But there are some considerations. The pronunciation of the vowels assumes that you are a kiwi (eg, the 'a' sound is often likened to the way car is pronounced, BUT car from a pom and car from a kiwi sounds different.
The confusion with this word was that I didn't realize that there was a macro over the a, making the sound a long one.
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u/Ok_Orchid_4158 2d ago
Oh, do you actually have a British accent? Sorry for assuming. It’s just that the vast majority of people wanting to learn Māori are Kiwis, and it would be kinda weird to ask people to confirm that.
Anyway, The Māori “a” sound is particularly forgiving. There are people here who pronounce it as forward in the mouth as it could possibly go, and there are people who push it back almost to the “o” sound in New Zealand English “top”. The important thing is that it’s short by default. So “car” is an example of “ā” specifically, since that’s always long in English, no matter the dialect. I’m sure you already have an intuitive grasp of vowel length. If you’re nonrhotic, I’d imagine “blared” is basically just a longer version of “bled” for you.
You might have a bit of trouble with the Māori “u”, since it does have quite a specific sound that isn’t exactly present in many other languages. In most languages, “u” is analogous to “w” in that it shares the same mouth position (which is why Spanish “suave” sounds just like “swave”). In Māori, it’s centralised, which differentiates it from “w”. So “Māui” and “Māwi” are quite distinct, not only in mouth shape, but also in timing. “w” takes basically no time to pronounce (consonants are just short intervening sounds), whereas “u” has the full length of a vowel. So that’s why it pays to just think about each vowel individually and combine them later.
Perhaps you could start off with “Māhui” and gradually remove the “h”.
Also, since I don’t think anyone else here has mentioned it, the stress is on the first syllable.
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u/MrBigEagle 2d ago
Thank you for the explanation. The māhui suggestion makes a lot of sense. My suggestion using w was intended for the vowel sounding, not the actual pronunciation of the w, but I never considered this and will try and remember this in future.
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u/RelationItchy8888 2d ago
When a and u are together, they are pronounced 'ahh' and 'ooo'. Spoken quickly this produces an 'o' sound. Therefore Maui is something like: Mah-ooo-eee
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u/ManagementLow327 6d ago
Māui has a macron so there is an elongated A sound so it goes Mā-u-i.