Talk:Niu Tireni
Kia ora koe te tangata i tuhituhingia tenei, ko takahia te mana o to tatau Reo rangatira, ko tuku ngia e koe ki raro, pera i te reo pākehā, (To the writer of the article, please don't belittle our language and its meanings by shortening important announcements as you have written here; our language is EXPRESSIVE not 'oneliners'.)
ka huaina 'Te Tiriti o Waitangi' ko 'Nu Tirani' (This means the Treaty of Waitangi will be renamed 'New Zealand' )
(To date quite a lot of discussion has ensued, by various nz govt administrations, renaming Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day.)
(Nu Tirani is a bastardisation of New Zealand.)
Hello, anonymous contributor! I agree with some of the above. But you are a bit unfair on the Rev Henry Williams, who was given a copy of the English version of the treaty with the request that he translate it into te Māori by 10 am next day. When I wrote the article, I was attempting to say that the treaty calls New Zealand "Nu Tirani". Sorry if I've got a passive instead of an active and/or got the word order wrong.
And it's not fair on me to talk about "shortening important announcements" - the article is just a starter, as it says at the bottom, so let's move onwards and upwards.
Please fix the article and write something more! Maybe you can do a direct translation of some of the "English" article about Aotearoa. But that might be better on the Aotearoa page.
E noho rā. Robin Patterson 20:27, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
On the subject of "one-liners" - here's a direct quote from p 101 of a "Grammar of the New Zealand Language", written by R. Maunsell, LL.D., Archdeacon of Auckland, published in 1894:
- In examining the nature of Maori propositions, the student will soon notice that they are characterized by a remarkable brevity and abruptness, as well as by the frequent occurrence of ellipses. As a New Zealander is generally unequal to a train of consecutive thought, so also is his language inadequate to exhibit with accuracy the various processes of the civilized intellect, such as comparing, abstracting, &c., or indeed any ideas beyond the simple and monotonous details of his daily life. It is, if we may so speak, an animated sketching, intended for general effect, the more delicate lines being but faintly touched.
- The student has already seen that Maori is defective in particles of illation, comparison, and copulation. The want of a verb substantive, which is so useful as a copula in other languages, will often, where accuracy is desired, cause both clumsiness and obscurity of construction.
- The process by which a New Zealander constructs his sentences is very similar to that of a child who is just beginning to speak. For example: If the latter wishes to express, "Is that a horse?" "Give me bread," he will most probably say, "A horse that?" "Me bread." He has the ideas of himself and bread, and, by pronouncing the one in immediate succession after the other, attempts to convey the idea of their mutual connection. So also will Maori, when it wishes to express the dependence of two or more ideas on each other, place them in close connection, as distinct existences, and leave the hearer to deduce their intended relations. From hence it may, a priori, be collected--1st. That Maori inclines to the substantive form. 2nd. That it will have a peculiar tendency to the indicative mode of statement. 3rd. That it delights in short sentences. ...
(I hope the anonymous contributor comes back, with dozens of the 130,000 people who now speak Māori, to show us Pākehā how expressive the language really is, 110 years later. Kia ora. Robin Patterson 06:04, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC) )
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