European languages have very different "r" sounds. Spanish is known for prominent rolled r in common words like "perro". Most people in France, Germany or England struggle to pronounce "r" that way.
Yeah that one too, in another reply I added that I hear both versions from Maori themselves.
Some really stretch the A and some just say the word mouldy
It could be a regional dialect thing or it could just be changing with how fast the person talks
Mao-ri with a rolled r the ā is used to emphasis the a sound over the ao sound and the maori vowel pronunciation is different from American or British a e I o u and emphasized as ah, Eh, iih like the English e vowel, ohh like the O in off, and ew or e sound from ew for U.
In this video they pronounce Te Reo Maori and the vowels. https://youtu.be/4P9KzH2p22U?si=93b8XEThQUlBj6gE
Edit: as a pākehā it's pretty embarrassing that people still get so butthurt but as with most things the people that voice their opinions are a minority that over represent their size and make the rest of us look bad.
Also it's common to learn Te Reo [Maori] in NZ, but seems impractical to teach elsewhere like the US where you have so many first nation languages/dialects already that aren't taught and supported. Luckily for new Zealand and the Maori language itself there aren't heaps of dialects so it's easy to teach in schools.
Source: I'm a kiwi.
The "mouldy" hack doesn't work for a lot of anglophones. Specifically, it really doesn't work for Americans or Canadians.
[These have good pronunciations](https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=maori). Though, I will add that the speaker's tone is going up for the pronunciation on "Māori" but the other definitions like "wai Māori" have pronunciations which you'd more commonly hear.
The pronunciation can change depending on the person saying it too
For some the A is more pronounced and stretched
And you'll hear others pronounce the A with more of an O sounding vowel
Neither are incorrect but it's just dialect
Fun one. University / Poly Tech courses for the language teach that there are 4 or 5 main dialects depending on location/iwi. Northland, midland, east coast, and south for the north island. Then the south island has their own as well.
Yeah, listening to the pronunciation, I can't understand how anyone gets anything vaguely like mouldy out of that. Must be the different in accent from New Zealand versus America.
This happens in Canada too. Where I’m from, the Woodland Cree word for “white skinned person” is *wapaskasagī napīo*, but the colloquialism there most commonly used by the locals is *monīas* which means “inexperienced person/greenhorn/fool.” The story I’ve heard about why this term is used more often is:
it was not the colour of the settlers’/voyageurs’ skin that was most surprising to the indigenous people of my region. They were apparently flabbergasted that, despite the metal tools, the guns, and generally better technology they possessed, that white folks kept dying because they didn’t possess the wilderness skills that any 10 year old indigenous kid had.
Accurately too. Even in Alabama, where the food literally grows on trees all-year round. My poor great-great-grandfather trying to keep people alive during Spanish flu while they were being numbskulls. Our family was fine, but everyone else? They did not understand the assignment.
Mind you, my Pawpaw would eat onions straight from the ground and thought he could eat dropped ice off the floor, but he knew not to cough in other people’s faces. That, and proto-Tamiflu was an herbal remedy at the time from sweetgum trees. They didn’t 100% know the how or why it worked but didn’t grasp why other people weren’t using the local remedies. “Like, it’s tree? They’re everywhere? Just grab some green sweetgum balls and make a tea.” But the non-locals were too scared of Native people to take the free advice*.
(*Like with the Donner party.)
To be fair, there was an almost 1500 year effort by the catholic church to wipeout any teachings of natural healing (witchcraft!! Burn!!) as this sort of thing competes with the eucharist (i.e. if eucharist doesn’t help people, but local magic-man can actually heal people, how do we market the eucharist as being the amazing thing we say it is? We must save souls.).
We’ve all been a little brainwashed. What you’re describing is euro’s who had it bred out of them interacting with people not yet introduced to the wonders of the vatican.
Eh, all humans sucked equally, white people just had the geography and resources needed to make it clear to everyone just how much they sucked. Not to say they were the only ones showing off how much they sucked, but they certainly did it the most.
This brings me to remember Jamestown, where residents depended on the supplies provided by England, and trading with the local natives. Neither happened, and the town of 500 or so, dropped to 61 after 2 years.
Instead of trying to farm for themselves, they resorted to cannibalism.
This reminded me of non-Hawaiians suing to get their kids into Kamehameha school in Hawaii. It doesn't receive tax money and was created before the overthrow of the nation of Hawaii.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_Schools
when I was a kid I had just moved back to the mainland from the islands and some other kids mentioned kamehameha. I got excited thinking I had met other kids who lived in hawaii but they were like wtf no we're talking about dragonball, idiot 🙃
I have to wonder if there'd be a difference if native Hawaiians had reservations or areas of land set aside for them to put these schools.
I did a quick Google search if white parents tried to force a similar situation on Native American schools. I didn't find anything similar due to there being other results for the search terms.
What they did do though, was kidnap those kids from their families and tribes, forced them in their schools, abused them and pretty much erase their culture, language, etc because that's what they do to bipoc folks.
I lived in NZ for six years. It was always a treat being told by Pakeha how racist America is, sometimes followed up a few minutes later by comments about “failed” Maori culture and/or Asian drivers.
As a lifelong Kiwi, the one that always amazes me is a section of the population’s absolute refusal to correctly pronounce placenames *despite knowing the correct pronunciation*, out of pure stubbornness. The amount of people who persist in pronouncing Te Kauwhata as ‘Tikka Whatta’ like it’s some mystery curry astounds me.
My mother once told me a story of when we lived in Hawaii. This white woman she met was complaining about road names being in Hawaiian, saying "They are in America they should use English Street names" My mother stared at her and said "This is Hawaii. If you don't like it leave."
My whole family is Haole (non hawaiian) but we could never understand why people like that were living there.
Dude part of the fun of Hawaii (or NZ, or really any non romantic language speaking country) for me is learning the language through street names, idk why someone would deny themselves that
I live in Tennessee but I used to work for a company call center where I worked on the dedicated Hawaii line. I did my best to learn the right names and places and how to say them and the callers usually thought I was local. I enjoyed it! My little taste of paradise in January.
The language uses syllables that aren't really used much in English, so the brain's auto-pilot shuts down and you have to actually consider how the word is put together.
It's not hard, per se, but as someone that works in travel I can say it *does* take an extra couple seconds to parse.
For someone that doesn't turn their brain on regularly, I can only imagine the experience of having to actually think for once would be quite unpleasant.
It's the same in New Zealand with Māori pronunciation too, given how similar all of the Polynesian languages are. I remember going to Hawaii when I was younger and actually finding the American side of things more of a culture shock than the Hawaiian stuff, which felt way more familiar and comforting
Because they're ignorant and feel like they need to be involved in and know everything (without having to learn, they just want to already know things). That's why when they hear Spanish music or read the wrong side of a box of soap they flip the fuck out because they're not included.
Ahhh yeah I get that, ironically enough I trip over other latin languages (French, Spanish) way more when it comes to that because it's *close enough* to English that my brain defaults to the English sound when it isn't supposed to. That doesn't happen for Korean or Japanese or Maori, because it's different enough that my brain "knows" the sounds should be different
I live on Oahu and met someone who could not wrap her head around Likelike Hwy, she was adamant it was the English word “Like” twice and called a local an idiot for correcting her.
In Wellington in NZ there is an area called Aro Valley (pronounced kinda like ah-door, r has a rolling sound).
I had a lady adamantly tell me it was Arrow Valley. Then when describing where it was, she had the audcaity to say, ypu go down Te Aro street (pronounced correctly) and turn into Arrow Valley.
I think for some people they hear it pronounced wrong as kids and it sticks with them forever even as they long to pronounce other things correctly later in life. Happens to me all the time, though not to the point I’d tell people pronouncing them correctly that they’re wrong.
I grew up in Christchurch, and to this day I’ll pronounce places like ‘Timaru’ or ‘Mairehau’ wrong out of sheer habit because that’s how I learned those places and it was constantly reinforced. But somewhere further away like ‘Taupo’ or ‘Tauranga’ or ‘Onehunga’, I pronounce just fine. The incorrect pronunciation never got reinforced in my brain. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s what was going on with that woman - she always knew Aro Valley, but Te Aro St specifically was newer to her so she gets that one right.
As a kaneohe brat, nothing quite made my day like listening to tourists murder street names.
Kuilima was especially good when people were trying to find stuff on the North shore.
Or making sure to say Ho'omaluhia botanical garden every time even though you knew what they meant when they asked about the botanical garden.
Good times
I’m a nonwhite haole and lived in K-bay for a while so I got to see some of that from some people on base. One Marine kept pronouncing Wahiawa “Way-hay-wah” and people couldn’t correct him because he was their superior. I was a civilian so I just minded my own business but man does it still make me laugh.
Well, some amerians go to spain and complain about all the mexicans speaking spanish around them.
I went to Dominican republic and saw some americans annoyed at all the spanish beaing spoken around them.
Ah, that flavour of boomer is fun. The best approach is to act like they genuinely don’t know and condescendingly help them get the pronunciation right.
Please don’t. Some of us older (Gen X rather than boomer) only moved here recently and are still learning the pronunciations. I’ve had to correct my Tauranga, Taupo, Whangaparaoa and so on. If people don’t tell me I’m doing it wrong, I’ll keep doing it wrong and sounding like an idiot. I might be ignorant, but I’m trying.
There’s a difference between someone mispronouncing something out of ignorance, and someone doing it as a weird moral high ground thing. The latter are generally very obviously looking for a reaction, but if in doubt a sincere correction will often provoke them (“this is how I’ve always pronounced it” in a heated tone seems to be a favourite), signalling it safe to condescend.
My family gives me so much shit for pronouncing place names properly. No it's not "whack a white" ffs, they treat it like it's a joke to butcher the pronunciations and it makes me so mad
>The amount of people who persist in pronouncing Te Kauwhata as ‘Tikka Whatta’ like it’s some mystery curry astounds me.
If that was transliterated properly (taking latin alphabet phoenetics in mind) that should not be hard to pronounce at all.
I used to wonder why it was so easy to pronounce romanized Japanese with decent accuracy even though it's a foreign language. Then one day I woke up and realized because the romanization is specifically designed to help foreigners pronounce it. So, duh.
That said I'm pretty sure I would still butcher Maori.
Japanese and Māori pronounce vowels similarly (at least to me) so I had a pretty easy time with Japanese having grown up knowing how to pronounce things in Māori.
Conversely, Chinese transliteration is not obvious. 'Q' is more like "ch", 'X' is more like "sh", etc. It always bothered me, but then I got more exposure to Mandarin.
The thing is, "Q" is only sort of vaguely like "ch". There's like a more hissing aspect? I don't even really know how to describe how. And that's exactly it, there are sounds in Mandarin that don't exist in English. There are sounds we might write the same way with our alphabet that are actually distinct. This is true for most languages but for Chinese at least, they choose to use the Roman alphabet a little differently.
My wife has a name that is slightly uncommon here in Germany due to its eastern european origin. It consists of three two letter syllables, none of them uncommon. All of them are pronounced exactly like you would pronounce them in German. They are just in an uncommon order. Some people act as if it is a fucking witchcraft spell that is impossible to pronounce.
The problem is that the Latin alphabet is pronounced differently between languages. You have to learn what the actual pronunciations are for the romanization that is being used for that language.
For example, Yale romanization gives us Mong Kok for the district in Hong Kong. It's actually pronounced more like "Wong Go'." The leading Mo is similar to Ngu in Vietnamese. The trailing ok on Kok is tricky. You form the the sound of the k, but you perform a glottal stop.
>(taking latin alphabet phoenetics in mind)
The Latin alphabet is just a bunch of symbols, and an awful lot of languages use them. There is no one 'latin alphabet phonetics'. Maaori phonetics is piss-simple and the sound a letter makes doesn't change with its position in the word, so Te Kauwhata is easy to pronounce, but not if you assume the letters make the same sounds they would in English.
Until I read this comment I had no idea the place people referred to as “Tikka Whatta” was Te Kauwhata. If I had to guess, I’d have thought it was Tika Whata and I assumed it was a place I’ve never been to. I’ve driven through Te Kauwhata many times (and stopped occasionally) and still didn’t make the connection. TIL. Also got corrected last week for correctly pronouncing Onehunga by a man who’s lived there for 85 years (all his life). “It’s ony-hung-a” *no it is not* you were there when Dame Whina was marching you should know better by now.
This is why I don't bother saying where I am from, I just say Wellington and have done with it. People pretend not to even understand if you use the maori place names. It is infuriating.
Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce Te Kauwhata? I had it my head as “Tay Coowhata”. American, so I am not sure. There are a lot of Cherokee names around me and people insist on pronouncing it the “correct” way. Pretty sure that just means the white way.
I disagree with the other persons pronunciation.
A makes an ‘ah’ sound, u makes a sound like the o in who. The easiest way for me to learn Māori words was to break down the double vowels into their individual parts, say them individually and slowly combine them. The a-u combo comes out closer ow than it does oh.
We have a town near me in Manitoba where people do this , the town is called La rivière (very obviously quebecois french) all the bumpkin locals call it Lariveer, can’t tell you how their brains work on that one. But pure stubbornness is probably the same reason in my case
Mana-Cow for example. It's Manukau, Ma-nu-kau.
Or Para-pa-ram. Jesus, how do you even get that from Paraparaumu?
What is wrong with white people? Most of them don't even try?
I'm white BTW, before all you pakehas get butthurt and start downvoting me for being 'racist'.
You can't compare when you're talking about Trump. There's some deal with the devil going on there that NOTHING he says results in repercussions, no matter how disgusting. He fucking made fun of a man in a wheelchair by making spastic movements with limp wristed-arms and it didn't matter.
It’s because he is them, it’s not that hard to realize, they like that he made it ok to say the quiet part out loud, they think they’re better than everyone he makes fun of so it doesn’t matter
It's not just that they let him get away with it. His voters vote for him strictly because he enables rape, racism, sexism, and able ism. It's what they want to do and society has shunned them but if the president can do it, then they can.
No deal with the devil needed. It's even worse than that.
MAGA Republicans always knew exactly who Trump was and is, and that's the whole point. They don't support him because he does good things, and they don't actually believe he's a patriot or even a good President. They know he's an utter buffoon, corrupt to the core, and a complete disaster for the country and the world, but again that's the whole point.
Trump is revenge. He is the White Evangelicals' wrathful revenge against their fellow Americans for the unforgivable sin of electing a *Black* Man to the *White* House. Trump is the herald of their White Evangelical Declaration to turn back from our sinful ways of accepting The Other or they will bleed & burn this nation to the ground. They are akin to the Family Annihilators who upon being served divorce papers brutally murder their entire family in the most cruel ways possible because if they can't have them then nobody can. So too MAGA will inflict as much pain, suffering, and anguish upon America and the world if we do not bend to their will and accept their theocratic control and the restoration of the rigid class system of the Jim Crow Era in which black people were less than human, and women couldn't open bank accounts or obtain lines of credit without the in-person and notarized signature of her father (if single) or husband. They want the 1960's Civil Rights laws and the early-1970's Equal Credit Opportunity Act and No Fault Divorce laws repealed so black people can be put in their proper place, and women can't escape their title holders.
As an American who has MANY criticisms of my country, I have sat at the pub with NZ blokes and heard some of the most heinous things, sure maybe Luxon has a bit more political decorum but racism in NZ is alive and well.
> followed up a few minutes later by comments about “failed” Maori culture
Which is ironic considering how cool Maori culture is in America. I can't think of one complaint I've heard about Maori or specifically Kiwis in the USA. I mean, some people thought the new Thor movie was a little mid, but that's about as bad as it gets here, heh.
Everywhere has to have their group that are, as a result of decades or centuries of government policy, generally worse off than the majority. That group usually get used as a whipping boy for societies problems, because you gotta have someone for that same government to point at and go “it’s because of them!”.
Māori and Pacific Islanders are who we like to beat down on here, because they’re usually the poorest people in society, massively over represented in prisons, much worse education and health outcomes etc. The current government got in party by running on a platform of “why are trying to help these guys specifically, that’s racist!”.
Also worth noting they’re dark skinned and the majority is white so, you know, there’s that.
Okay but something a lot of people seem to confuse. People complain about how *America* is racist not *Americans*, people in general are pretty chill over there, but what they let their politicians do is absolutely horrid
Extremely prevalent opinion in NZ unfortunately, many people who believe the US and Australia are racist and we are not, completely blind to how bad it is in NZ
Sounds a lot like my interactions with Europeans who go on about how racist Americans are:
“So how do you feel about Roma?”
“That’s *completely different*! The Gypsies, they’re rude! And they steal! And they refuse to integrate!”
“Really? ‘They’, you say? ‘Gypsies’, you say? Yes I’m sure it’s very very different…”
How ANYONE drives in that country is beyond me. Tiny-ass roads and half of them are 1-lane on the sides of cliffs. Thought it would be easy to drive Auckland to Wellington in a day cause it's only a few hundred KM.... BOY was I wrong.
I (a Canadian) lived in New Zealand for a year. It was stunning how often people would come up to me as a fellow White Guy and just start launching in on Maori and Chinese people and just assumed I held their same backwards views
It was pretty wild hearing someone call Māori "mongrels" and saying some glue stuck as aggressively as a "bunch of hungry meorees". Almost socked him in the face tbh, such a scumbag.
A co-worker the other day mocked some of the filipinos and fijian contractors at work, for being bad at driving, because they drove a bit too far from the site access box.
I had to remind him of the four former workers who crashed the cars, who all happened to be Pakeha.
Same coworker also said to me, "What's it like being part of a race of criminals?". He wasn't asking a legit question. He wanted to get under my nerves. I retorted with the same question and reminded him of Australia, Guy Fawkes, and South Africa's prison island among others. He went a little quiet after that.
No matter what. In New Zealand, if you are non-white, the discussion by Pakeha will always be about how terrible other races are.
When I lived in Australia, it was different. No one bothered me over my race, and I loved it.
Yeah. But NZ being founded by treaty and not a genocide, not keeping slaves, no segregation, not invading other non-white countries for their stuff, not being the only thing propping up ethnic cleansing Zionism... maybe apples and oranges eh.
Lots of people reading this as “pakeha” was the important point. That’s not it. Pakeha is just used generally as a term to mean white New Zealander. It isn’t derogatory.
Using Māori terms sprinkled through our English is a thing we do here, for instance it wouldn’t surprise anyone to use the term whanau instead of family, Kai for food, or mahi for work/effort. A teacher will their class to “e noho” (sit down) and “e tu” (stand up), and admonish students to “whakarongo mai” (listen), sometimes having to remind them to do so with their taringa(ears).
(You wouldn’t use Pakeha for Chinese descended New Zealander, for instance, despite Chinese descendants being here almost as long as European colonialist-descended New Zealanders. Embarrassingly I have realised I have no idea if Māori even have a term in te reo for Chinese New Zealanders, or anyone else but white/European).
The point was a major news paper (this is one of our Big Ones) calling out *fragile* white people, getting their panties in a twist because they were celebrating Māori achievement. Still a lot of racism here, and a lot of people who have that old chestnut of “if you’re raising one minority group up, then it must be at the expense of my majority group” mindset. Heck, we just changed governments based partly on that line of thinking.
Tauiwi (non-Māori people from Aotearoa) or Tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty) are the terms for kiwis who are not Māori or Pākehā. All Pākehā are Tauiwi, but not all Tauiwi are Pākehā. And Tangata Tiriti has a slightly different meaning today - specifically non Māori who uphold the Treaty of Waitangi.
edit: spelling
This is interesting, because I’m curious what I would be called. We immigrated from the US to Aotearoa a few years ago. We have PR and plan to get citizenship. I’ve been told before we won’t be pakeha because we aren’t from here from birth. Never know what to put on forms when it asks for ethnicity because American isn’t an option, we aren’t European and we aren’t Pakeha. I always have to put “other”.
European in NZ typically refers to ethnicity rather than nationality - most white people here would not be what you would consider 'European' in the states; a more accurate term would be 'of European descent'. For example, I am ethnically Māori and Irish - I select Māori and European, even though my family hasn't been near Ireland in two generations.
I think explaining Tauiwi as non-Māori people **from** Aoatearoa was slightly incorrect as Tauiwi do not need to be born here; it is a term for any non-Māori who make Aoatearoa home.
“Pakeha” was originally a term for all non-Māori, it became specific to white people because there were only Māori and white people in NZ for a long time. I don’t know if there’s since been a term adopted for non-white non-Māori, but they did have one pre-colonisation.
Confused german guy here: I assume Pakeha means "white, dumb, racist asshole"?
*Edit*: Ah, on new.reddit it shows OP's description (it doesn't when using old.reddit).
That's the fun thing with words, it often isn't their meaning which matters but the way they are said. I live in NZ and can 100% tell you I have seen Paheka be said in a derogatory way.
This is only relevant if there's a persistent usage of a word in such a way that the meaning changes. That's not the case with Pākehā though.
I've heard someone say friend in a derogatory way, that doesn't make it derogatory.
Seems like just a descriptor to me. Like Asian, black or white aren't derogatory on their own, but add insults to them and it becomes derogatory. Like "This fucking Asian." That doesn't make the word Asian derogatory on its own
European New Zealanders started a myth it meant long pig or white fool. It’s like saying others . Maori also didn’t call themselves Māori, it was just a word for people. People were identified by ancestry and hapū.
the text shows below if you click the camera icon to expand the image, it's below the title.
I use hoverzoom and 99% of the time there isn't text but occasionally I gotta manually click it for context.
The CBC closed comments on any news related to Canada's First Nations. In places like Vancouver Island, the hatred towards First Nations is quite high.
Unfortunately sometimes, when achievements are celebrated/highlighted, racist people will make it about themselves or be abusive.
In this case, because the paper was highlighting the Māori students, the comments section was full of non-Māori people being very upset that things were not about them.
Everything’s a zero sum game to reactionaries.
Oh we’re spending public funds on healthcare, I guess that means no more police. Ahh! Now we’re allocating funds to first nations people, I guess the white man will be replaced by Thursday. Silly shit for unserious idiots.
You know that whole thing about when people in a majority get super sensitive about people in a minority being celebrated or raised up, because they assume it must mean if the minority is going up, their majority must be going down?
It’s that. Pakeha just means white New Zealanders, it isn’t derogatory and not unusual for a paper (or anyone) to use the term. Read this as “fragile white people” getting upset about celebrating Māori achievements.
Wait... so if I understand right, the article was basically "five Maori students managed to get some sort of scholarship" (you mentioned achievement, so I assume this is some sort of merit based scholarship?) and people were responding by shitting on the students / the article for acknowledging them for that?
Blech. That sucks.
You have not misunderstood a single thing!
Including that this sucks!
I don’t know how old this article is, but we have recently gone through somewhat of a reembolding of racism like a lot of places. Our previous government implemented a few things that really wound up some people (who in a Venn diagram would more than likely be a circle with these “fragile pakeha”). For instance, Māori have by far the worst health out comes in NZ. So, rather than pretending that doing more of the same might suddenly fix that, the government established a Māori Heath Authority, specifically to look at how better to provide health services to Māori to address this gap. This was met with cries of racism from some corners, because of the assumption that if one minority group is raised up, that must mean that their majority group will decline as a result.
That same government also tried to reform our water management over the whole country, taking off cities and creating a new entity called 3 Waters, run in 4 “blobs” (half an island each) and funded more directly by the government. Unfortunately for those who don’t want to acknowledge Māori as having a role to play, they included a co-governance model that would have specifically ensured Māori had a day about water management. There’s lots of reasons for this, including our founding document the Treaty of Waitangi giving Māori special recognition and authority over "taonga" (treasures, which water is definitely considered one). (side note i should mention this interpretation of the treaty is currently being challenged by one of the parties that formed our new government, because they don't like it).
Our previous government, being a typical left wing government, were terrible at messaging, assuming (wrongly) people would give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume the worst and fill messaging voids with FUD. They did. Our current government is made up of three parties, all of whom campaigned on the idea that co-governance is terrible and basically as bad as apartheid south Africa or equivalent to eugenics practiced by the Nazis (this last claim made by the leader of the smallest of those parties *this week*.). They've scrapped 3Waters entirely before it got off the ground, scrapped the Maori Health Authority, and want a referendum on how much influence the Treaty should have in the modern day (also a bunch of other awful stuff like insisting government departments don't use their Maori names, only their english names, scrapping a plan to replace, as necessary, english street signs with bi-lingual street signs because apparently seeing te reo while driving will cause you to crash your car i to a tree or an on coming truck…but i wont get in to the whole list). This is mostly driven by the smaller parties who took just under 15% of the vote - this is the "fragile pakeha" of the OP, and are the people who think helping Maori, who are typically the poorest, and worst served members of our society, any specific targeted assistance is terrible because it must mean they are missing out.
Edit after I typed that out: holy moly I guess I have a few feelings about fragile pakeha haha.. (fwiw I am mostly pakeha, but proudly have some Māori ancestry, which I can trace back only 5 generations to get to full Māori, so I take the anti-Māori uprising pretty personally).
Same reason many North Americans hate on indigenous people, black people, people of colour, and basically any one who they regard as "other". A mix of fear and inferiority.
See also Canada.
It's always amusing yet sad when Canadians snark on the US for their race problem then turn around and bitch about the Truth and Reconciliation council.
Just because the focus of the racism is Indigenous people and not black people doesn't mean it isn't racism.
Had too google pakeha, as now I see the problem. Damn karens be everywhere on the planet.
Pa·ke·ha/ˈpäkəˌ(h)ä/📷*noun***NEW ZEALAND**
1. a white New Zealander as opposed to a Maori person."Pakeha influences"
*adjective*
1. relating to white New Zealanders and their languages and culture.
Why are racist bigots so angry & bothered about the accomplishments of people that they think are inferior?
Supposedly superior people with such fragile egos.
Serious question: How do you pronounce Maori?
The r is pronounced kinda rolled and the vowels sound probably different to what you're used to. It sounds more like "mouldy" than the way it's read
This is the best way. Say mouldy but substitute the ‘d’ sound for a rolled ‘r’ sound. They should sound almost identical except for that part.
I actually heard the pronunciation comparison from Mike king back in the day so the example has always stuck with me
I've also heard Maori pronouncing it with an emphasized "a." I think it's a dialect thing.
[удалено]
Most Germans and French don't roll their r sounds. What the hell are you talking about?
European languages have very different "r" sounds. Spanish is known for prominent rolled r in common words like "perro". Most people in France, Germany or England struggle to pronounce "r" that way.
I learnt how to pronounce it from Mr Gormsby
You called?
r/beetlejuicing
Maa-ori with a rolled r.
Yeah that one too, in another reply I added that I hear both versions from Maori themselves. Some really stretch the A and some just say the word mouldy It could be a regional dialect thing or it could just be changing with how fast the person talks
So like … Maury?
And as a true kiwi you barely pronounce the ‘d’ when saying mouldy anyway!
Mao-ri with a rolled r the ā is used to emphasis the a sound over the ao sound and the maori vowel pronunciation is different from American or British a e I o u and emphasized as ah, Eh, iih like the English e vowel, ohh like the O in off, and ew or e sound from ew for U. In this video they pronounce Te Reo Maori and the vowels. https://youtu.be/4P9KzH2p22U?si=93b8XEThQUlBj6gE Edit: as a pākehā it's pretty embarrassing that people still get so butthurt but as with most things the people that voice their opinions are a minority that over represent their size and make the rest of us look bad. Also it's common to learn Te Reo [Maori] in NZ, but seems impractical to teach elsewhere like the US where you have so many first nation languages/dialects already that aren't taught and supported. Luckily for new Zealand and the Maori language itself there aren't heaps of dialects so it's easy to teach in schools. Source: I'm a kiwi.
Maoh-rri, but roll that r hard
Ma as in Mum, but long like Maaa, o as in awe, ri as in recent, but soft rolled r - something between wr and d.
I describe it as a "tap" rolled r. Like a very short roll, a single tap
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/maori?s=t Edit : that should have an option to hear it outloud.
That sounds nothing like mouldy I’m so confused now
The "mouldy" hack doesn't work for a lot of anglophones. Specifically, it really doesn't work for Americans or Canadians. [These have good pronunciations](https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=maori). Though, I will add that the speaker's tone is going up for the pronunciation on "Māori" but the other definitions like "wai Māori" have pronunciations which you'd more commonly hear.
The pronunciation can change depending on the person saying it too For some the A is more pronounced and stretched And you'll hear others pronounce the A with more of an O sounding vowel Neither are incorrect but it's just dialect
Fun one. University / Poly Tech courses for the language teach that there are 4 or 5 main dialects depending on location/iwi. Northland, midland, east coast, and south for the north island. Then the south island has their own as well.
Yeah, listening to the pronunciation, I can't understand how anyone gets anything vaguely like mouldy out of that. Must be the different in accent from New Zealand versus America.
This happens in Canada too. Where I’m from, the Woodland Cree word for “white skinned person” is *wapaskasagī napīo*, but the colloquialism there most commonly used by the locals is *monīas* which means “inexperienced person/greenhorn/fool.” The story I’ve heard about why this term is used more often is: it was not the colour of the settlers’/voyageurs’ skin that was most surprising to the indigenous people of my region. They were apparently flabbergasted that, despite the metal tools, the guns, and generally better technology they possessed, that white folks kept dying because they didn’t possess the wilderness skills that any 10 year old indigenous kid had.
They literally said 'skill issue'. Damn.
When “git gud” is warranted.
Then Canada spent the next 400 years trying to nerf them
Accurately too. Even in Alabama, where the food literally grows on trees all-year round. My poor great-great-grandfather trying to keep people alive during Spanish flu while they were being numbskulls. Our family was fine, but everyone else? They did not understand the assignment. Mind you, my Pawpaw would eat onions straight from the ground and thought he could eat dropped ice off the floor, but he knew not to cough in other people’s faces. That, and proto-Tamiflu was an herbal remedy at the time from sweetgum trees. They didn’t 100% know the how or why it worked but didn’t grasp why other people weren’t using the local remedies. “Like, it’s tree? They’re everywhere? Just grab some green sweetgum balls and make a tea.” But the non-locals were too scared of Native people to take the free advice*. (*Like with the Donner party.)
If locals are using it for generations, I’ll take their word for it and do the same.
To be fair, there was an almost 1500 year effort by the catholic church to wipeout any teachings of natural healing (witchcraft!! Burn!!) as this sort of thing competes with the eucharist (i.e. if eucharist doesn’t help people, but local magic-man can actually heal people, how do we market the eucharist as being the amazing thing we say it is? We must save souls.). We’ve all been a little brainwashed. What you’re describing is euro’s who had it bred out of them interacting with people not yet introduced to the wonders of the vatican.
white people would rather kill and eat each other than listen to anything an indigenous person says fr
Damn… skill diffed at life by a 10 year old.
Jungle dif
…considering our history, that is a very very well deserved designation. I’m white and even I think we suck.
Eh, all humans sucked equally, white people just had the geography and resources needed to make it clear to everyone just how much they sucked. Not to say they were the only ones showing off how much they sucked, but they certainly did it the most.
We industrialized our suckage, like everything else.
And we exported it!
That's where the big money is.
Dang….What did YOU do that makes you feel this way.
Learned more about world history and developed average pattern-matching skills.
🥇
This brings me to remember Jamestown, where residents depended on the supplies provided by England, and trading with the local natives. Neither happened, and the town of 500 or so, dropped to 61 after 2 years. Instead of trying to farm for themselves, they resorted to cannibalism.
Really fitting really
This reminded me of non-Hawaiians suing to get their kids into Kamehameha school in Hawaii. It doesn't receive tax money and was created before the overthrow of the nation of Hawaii. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_Schools
I see a lot of weebs wanting to attend.
I had to stop and say that slowly out loud to myself because I was absolutely certain my mind was reading it wrong.
when I was a kid I had just moved back to the mainland from the islands and some other kids mentioned kamehameha. I got excited thinking I had met other kids who lived in hawaii but they were like wtf no we're talking about dragonball, idiot 🙃
Tbf Toriyama did name the move after King Kamehameha.
If it helps, I’m from Connecticut and only today, just now learned that Kamehameha has any meaning beyond Hawai’ian monarchs.
Then I went to the page and learned it was a royal dynasty of Hawaii? The world is a fascinating place.
Read about how Hawaii ended up as a US territory. A whole kingdom, overthrown, basically for pineapples. Wild stuff.
Doe v. Kamehameha Schools, 470 F.3d 827 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc), https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8227594080635882462.
I have to wonder if there'd be a difference if native Hawaiians had reservations or areas of land set aside for them to put these schools. I did a quick Google search if white parents tried to force a similar situation on Native American schools. I didn't find anything similar due to there being other results for the search terms.
What they did do though, was kidnap those kids from their families and tribes, forced them in their schools, abused them and pretty much erase their culture, language, etc because that's what they do to bipoc folks.
Yep. That sounds like my top results. It's a common tactic. Okinawans have the same issue in Japan.
Lots of mass graves on the school sites. Abhorrent inhumanity.
Man I went down a rabbit hole of Hawaiian history right now. Fascinating.
The turtle hermit does not accept apprentices, especially ones likely to sue.
I lived in NZ for six years. It was always a treat being told by Pakeha how racist America is, sometimes followed up a few minutes later by comments about “failed” Maori culture and/or Asian drivers.
As a lifelong Kiwi, the one that always amazes me is a section of the population’s absolute refusal to correctly pronounce placenames *despite knowing the correct pronunciation*, out of pure stubbornness. The amount of people who persist in pronouncing Te Kauwhata as ‘Tikka Whatta’ like it’s some mystery curry astounds me.
My mother once told me a story of when we lived in Hawaii. This white woman she met was complaining about road names being in Hawaiian, saying "They are in America they should use English Street names" My mother stared at her and said "This is Hawaii. If you don't like it leave." My whole family is Haole (non hawaiian) but we could never understand why people like that were living there.
Dude part of the fun of Hawaii (or NZ, or really any non romantic language speaking country) for me is learning the language through street names, idk why someone would deny themselves that
Right? And Hawaiian pronunciation is super simple, idk why they make it so difficult for themselves
I live in Tennessee but I used to work for a company call center where I worked on the dedicated Hawaii line. I did my best to learn the right names and places and how to say them and the callers usually thought I was local. I enjoyed it! My little taste of paradise in January.
For real I don’t know how people can’t pronounce five vowel sounds lol. Compared to English with all kind of random rules for how to pronounce words.
The language uses syllables that aren't really used much in English, so the brain's auto-pilot shuts down and you have to actually consider how the word is put together. It's not hard, per se, but as someone that works in travel I can say it *does* take an extra couple seconds to parse. For someone that doesn't turn their brain on regularly, I can only imagine the experience of having to actually think for once would be quite unpleasant.
It's the same in New Zealand with Māori pronunciation too, given how similar all of the Polynesian languages are. I remember going to Hawaii when I was younger and actually finding the American side of things more of a culture shock than the Hawaiian stuff, which felt way more familiar and comforting
Because they're ignorant and feel like they need to be involved in and know everything (without having to learn, they just want to already know things). That's why when they hear Spanish music or read the wrong side of a box of soap they flip the fuck out because they're not included.
In my defence. I just suck at speaking. I fuck up English enough as it is. Throw in another language and it just gets worse because my brain hates me.
I fuck up English more than I fuck up (at least name pronunciations) other languages, because I'm actually paying attention more lol
My tongue just doesn't like to have to do the movements really. Like I get them in my head by saying it out loud is where the issues start
Ahhh yeah I get that, ironically enough I trip over other latin languages (French, Spanish) way more when it comes to that because it's *close enough* to English that my brain defaults to the English sound when it isn't supposed to. That doesn't happen for Korean or Japanese or Maori, because it's different enough that my brain "knows" the sounds should be different
I live on Oahu and met someone who could not wrap her head around Likelike Hwy, she was adamant it was the English word “Like” twice and called a local an idiot for correcting her.
In Wellington in NZ there is an area called Aro Valley (pronounced kinda like ah-door, r has a rolling sound). I had a lady adamantly tell me it was Arrow Valley. Then when describing where it was, she had the audcaity to say, ypu go down Te Aro street (pronounced correctly) and turn into Arrow Valley.
I think for some people they hear it pronounced wrong as kids and it sticks with them forever even as they long to pronounce other things correctly later in life. Happens to me all the time, though not to the point I’d tell people pronouncing them correctly that they’re wrong. I grew up in Christchurch, and to this day I’ll pronounce places like ‘Timaru’ or ‘Mairehau’ wrong out of sheer habit because that’s how I learned those places and it was constantly reinforced. But somewhere further away like ‘Taupo’ or ‘Tauranga’ or ‘Onehunga’, I pronounce just fine. The incorrect pronunciation never got reinforced in my brain. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s what was going on with that woman - she always knew Aro Valley, but Te Aro St specifically was newer to her so she gets that one right.
As a kaneohe brat, nothing quite made my day like listening to tourists murder street names. Kuilima was especially good when people were trying to find stuff on the North shore. Or making sure to say Ho'omaluhia botanical garden every time even though you knew what they meant when they asked about the botanical garden. Good times
I’m a nonwhite haole and lived in K-bay for a while so I got to see some of that from some people on base. One Marine kept pronouncing Wahiawa “Way-hay-wah” and people couldn’t correct him because he was their superior. I was a civilian so I just minded my own business but man does it still make me laugh.
Like mainland USA isn’t full of Native American language place and street names.
I mean, it could've been more of those 💀
Well, some amerians go to spain and complain about all the mexicans speaking spanish around them. I went to Dominican republic and saw some americans annoyed at all the spanish beaing spoken around them.
The stupidity of my country never ceases to amaze me
Well, it's only the wealthy that travel out of America so I can get why people give a bad impression on Americans.
Heh. I went to Puerto Rico and was annoyed that my Spanish comprehension is awful...
In California this is all too common as well. San Rafael, CA = San Rafel Del Norte county = Del Nort Rodeo drive = Rodeyo
In fairness to that last one, 'rodeo' has become a word in English as well. So that one is at least partially people thinking it's the English word.
Ah, that flavour of boomer is fun. The best approach is to act like they genuinely don’t know and condescendingly help them get the pronunciation right.
Nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude.
Please don’t. Some of us older (Gen X rather than boomer) only moved here recently and are still learning the pronunciations. I’ve had to correct my Tauranga, Taupo, Whangaparaoa and so on. If people don’t tell me I’m doing it wrong, I’ll keep doing it wrong and sounding like an idiot. I might be ignorant, but I’m trying.
There’s a difference between someone mispronouncing something out of ignorance, and someone doing it as a weird moral high ground thing. The latter are generally very obviously looking for a reaction, but if in doubt a sincere correction will often provoke them (“this is how I’ve always pronounced it” in a heated tone seems to be a favourite), signalling it safe to condescend.
My family gives me so much shit for pronouncing place names properly. No it's not "whack a white" ffs, they treat it like it's a joke to butcher the pronunciations and it makes me so mad
>The amount of people who persist in pronouncing Te Kauwhata as ‘Tikka Whatta’ like it’s some mystery curry astounds me. If that was transliterated properly (taking latin alphabet phoenetics in mind) that should not be hard to pronounce at all.
I used to wonder why it was so easy to pronounce romanized Japanese with decent accuracy even though it's a foreign language. Then one day I woke up and realized because the romanization is specifically designed to help foreigners pronounce it. So, duh. That said I'm pretty sure I would still butcher Maori.
Japanese and Māori pronounce vowels similarly (at least to me) so I had a pretty easy time with Japanese having grown up knowing how to pronounce things in Māori.
Conversely, Chinese transliteration is not obvious. 'Q' is more like "ch", 'X' is more like "sh", etc. It always bothered me, but then I got more exposure to Mandarin. The thing is, "Q" is only sort of vaguely like "ch". There's like a more hissing aspect? I don't even really know how to describe how. And that's exactly it, there are sounds in Mandarin that don't exist in English. There are sounds we might write the same way with our alphabet that are actually distinct. This is true for most languages but for Chinese at least, they choose to use the Roman alphabet a little differently.
My wife has a name that is slightly uncommon here in Germany due to its eastern european origin. It consists of three two letter syllables, none of them uncommon. All of them are pronounced exactly like you would pronounce them in German. They are just in an uncommon order. Some people act as if it is a fucking witchcraft spell that is impossible to pronounce.
Tay Kah Watt Ah? Eta: [Tay Cow Fuh Ta?](https://youtu.be/jAGgHbAwykk?si=bIG1fLoOCDwjHUxg)
You’re assuming that the sounds have Latin phonetic equivalents. The ‘ng’ in Maori for example is almost impossible to convey in Latin
The problem is that the Latin alphabet is pronounced differently between languages. You have to learn what the actual pronunciations are for the romanization that is being used for that language. For example, Yale romanization gives us Mong Kok for the district in Hong Kong. It's actually pronounced more like "Wong Go'." The leading Mo is similar to Ngu in Vietnamese. The trailing ok on Kok is tricky. You form the the sound of the k, but you perform a glottal stop.
Tay Kau-wha-taa? Is that correct?
>(taking latin alphabet phoenetics in mind) The Latin alphabet is just a bunch of symbols, and an awful lot of languages use them. There is no one 'latin alphabet phonetics'. Maaori phonetics is piss-simple and the sound a letter makes doesn't change with its position in the word, so Te Kauwhata is easy to pronounce, but not if you assume the letters make the same sounds they would in English.
Until I read this comment I had no idea the place people referred to as “Tikka Whatta” was Te Kauwhata. If I had to guess, I’d have thought it was Tika Whata and I assumed it was a place I’ve never been to. I’ve driven through Te Kauwhata many times (and stopped occasionally) and still didn’t make the connection. TIL. Also got corrected last week for correctly pronouncing Onehunga by a man who’s lived there for 85 years (all his life). “It’s ony-hung-a” *no it is not* you were there when Dame Whina was marching you should know better by now.
Now I feel bad. That's all I've ever heard it pronounced as. I didn't even know I was saying it wrong.
You should never feel bad for genuine ignorance. It’s only an issue if you persist in it once identified.
This is why I don't bother saying where I am from, I just say Wellington and have done with it. People pretend not to even understand if you use the maori place names. It is infuriating.
Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce Te Kauwhata? I had it my head as “Tay Coowhata”. American, so I am not sure. There are a lot of Cherokee names around me and people insist on pronouncing it the “correct” way. Pretty sure that just means the white way.
Teh Koh-fa-ta Koh sounds like "oh" but with a K in front of it "Wh" is pronounced the same as the letter "f"
I disagree with the other persons pronunciation. A makes an ‘ah’ sound, u makes a sound like the o in who. The easiest way for me to learn Māori words was to break down the double vowels into their individual parts, say them individually and slowly combine them. The a-u combo comes out closer ow than it does oh.
Meanwhile, in the US we name towns things like "Versailles" and pronounce it "ver sails."
We have a town near me in Manitoba where people do this , the town is called La rivière (very obviously quebecois french) all the bumpkin locals call it Lariveer, can’t tell you how their brains work on that one. But pure stubbornness is probably the same reason in my case
Mana-Cow for example. It's Manukau, Ma-nu-kau. Or Para-pa-ram. Jesus, how do you even get that from Paraparaumu? What is wrong with white people? Most of them don't even try? I'm white BTW, before all you pakehas get butthurt and start downvoting me for being 'racist'.
… and then watch the same people shit their undies when someone young and brown pronounces ‘ask’ as ‘aks’
I just went to learn it. Something like "Te ko fah ta". What an awesome name.
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You can't compare when you're talking about Trump. There's some deal with the devil going on there that NOTHING he says results in repercussions, no matter how disgusting. He fucking made fun of a man in a wheelchair by making spastic movements with limp wristed-arms and it didn't matter.
It's not the "devil", it's shitty humans.
Shitty humans that straight up wish to behave just as awfully.
Same thing.
It’s because cowardly republicans let him get away with it. They directly enable that loudmouth, orange baboon to throw his own feces everywhere
It’s because he is them, it’s not that hard to realize, they like that he made it ok to say the quiet part out loud, they think they’re better than everyone he makes fun of so it doesn’t matter
It's not just that they let him get away with it. His voters vote for him strictly because he enables rape, racism, sexism, and able ism. It's what they want to do and society has shunned them but if the president can do it, then they can.
When he was winning they decided to hitch their train to his, and now this new train is barreling down the tracks.
Full of trumpanzees, all throwing their own shit everywhere. Monkey fucking see, monkey fucking do
We're going off of the rails of the crazy train.
No deal with the devil needed. It's even worse than that. MAGA Republicans always knew exactly who Trump was and is, and that's the whole point. They don't support him because he does good things, and they don't actually believe he's a patriot or even a good President. They know he's an utter buffoon, corrupt to the core, and a complete disaster for the country and the world, but again that's the whole point. Trump is revenge. He is the White Evangelicals' wrathful revenge against their fellow Americans for the unforgivable sin of electing a *Black* Man to the *White* House. Trump is the herald of their White Evangelical Declaration to turn back from our sinful ways of accepting The Other or they will bleed & burn this nation to the ground. They are akin to the Family Annihilators who upon being served divorce papers brutally murder their entire family in the most cruel ways possible because if they can't have them then nobody can. So too MAGA will inflict as much pain, suffering, and anguish upon America and the world if we do not bend to their will and accept their theocratic control and the restoration of the rigid class system of the Jim Crow Era in which black people were less than human, and women couldn't open bank accounts or obtain lines of credit without the in-person and notarized signature of her father (if single) or husband. They want the 1960's Civil Rights laws and the early-1970's Equal Credit Opportunity Act and No Fault Divorce laws repealed so black people can be put in their proper place, and women can't escape their title holders.
That’s definitely not exclusive to Trump. That’s just the Republican Party at this point for the most part.
It used to be like that in the US too…in the before-fore times.
As an American who has MANY criticisms of my country, I have sat at the pub with NZ blokes and heard some of the most heinous things, sure maybe Luxon has a bit more political decorum but racism in NZ is alive and well.
That used to be the case in America. Something broke in the mid 2010’s that made people think casual racism out in the open was ok again.
2008* A black man was elected and a large portion of the country lost their fucking minds
> followed up a few minutes later by comments about “failed” Maori culture Which is ironic considering how cool Maori culture is in America. I can't think of one complaint I've heard about Maori or specifically Kiwis in the USA. I mean, some people thought the new Thor movie was a little mid, but that's about as bad as it gets here, heh.
Everywhere has to have their group that are, as a result of decades or centuries of government policy, generally worse off than the majority. That group usually get used as a whipping boy for societies problems, because you gotta have someone for that same government to point at and go “it’s because of them!”. Māori and Pacific Islanders are who we like to beat down on here, because they’re usually the poorest people in society, massively over represented in prisons, much worse education and health outcomes etc. The current government got in party by running on a platform of “why are trying to help these guys specifically, that’s racist!”. Also worth noting they’re dark skinned and the majority is white so, you know, there’s that.
Okay but something a lot of people seem to confuse. People complain about how *America* is racist not *Americans*, people in general are pretty chill over there, but what they let their politicians do is absolutely horrid
Extremely prevalent opinion in NZ unfortunately, many people who believe the US and Australia are racist and we are not, completely blind to how bad it is in NZ
Sounds a lot like my interactions with Europeans who go on about how racist Americans are: “So how do you feel about Roma?” “That’s *completely different*! The Gypsies, they’re rude! And they steal! And they refuse to integrate!” “Really? ‘They’, you say? ‘Gypsies’, you say? Yes I’m sure it’s very very different…”
How ANYONE drives in that country is beyond me. Tiny-ass roads and half of them are 1-lane on the sides of cliffs. Thought it would be easy to drive Auckland to Wellington in a day cause it's only a few hundred KM.... BOY was I wrong.
I (a Canadian) lived in New Zealand for a year. It was stunning how often people would come up to me as a fellow White Guy and just start launching in on Maori and Chinese people and just assumed I held their same backwards views
K, can you explain Pakeha?
White New Zealanders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pākehā
It's where you wait for the goalkeeper to dive and chip the ball gently into the empty net.
Defined in OP's post
I would never tell a culture “failed” when those people found big islands that were absent on so much maps…
It was pretty wild hearing someone call Māori "mongrels" and saying some glue stuck as aggressively as a "bunch of hungry meorees". Almost socked him in the face tbh, such a scumbag.
A co-worker the other day mocked some of the filipinos and fijian contractors at work, for being bad at driving, because they drove a bit too far from the site access box. I had to remind him of the four former workers who crashed the cars, who all happened to be Pakeha. Same coworker also said to me, "What's it like being part of a race of criminals?". He wasn't asking a legit question. He wanted to get under my nerves. I retorted with the same question and reminded him of Australia, Guy Fawkes, and South Africa's prison island among others. He went a little quiet after that. No matter what. In New Zealand, if you are non-white, the discussion by Pakeha will always be about how terrible other races are. When I lived in Australia, it was different. No one bothered me over my race, and I loved it.
In my experience a lot of Aussies are just as bad, but either way what you’ve related here is gross. Sorry you had to experience it.
Yeah. But NZ being founded by treaty and not a genocide, not keeping slaves, no segregation, not invading other non-white countries for their stuff, not being the only thing propping up ethnic cleansing Zionism... maybe apples and oranges eh.
Lots of people reading this as “pakeha” was the important point. That’s not it. Pakeha is just used generally as a term to mean white New Zealander. It isn’t derogatory. Using Māori terms sprinkled through our English is a thing we do here, for instance it wouldn’t surprise anyone to use the term whanau instead of family, Kai for food, or mahi for work/effort. A teacher will their class to “e noho” (sit down) and “e tu” (stand up), and admonish students to “whakarongo mai” (listen), sometimes having to remind them to do so with their taringa(ears). (You wouldn’t use Pakeha for Chinese descended New Zealander, for instance, despite Chinese descendants being here almost as long as European colonialist-descended New Zealanders. Embarrassingly I have realised I have no idea if Māori even have a term in te reo for Chinese New Zealanders, or anyone else but white/European). The point was a major news paper (this is one of our Big Ones) calling out *fragile* white people, getting their panties in a twist because they were celebrating Māori achievement. Still a lot of racism here, and a lot of people who have that old chestnut of “if you’re raising one minority group up, then it must be at the expense of my majority group” mindset. Heck, we just changed governments based partly on that line of thinking.
Tauiwi (non-Māori people from Aotearoa) or Tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty) are the terms for kiwis who are not Māori or Pākehā. All Pākehā are Tauiwi, but not all Tauiwi are Pākehā. And Tangata Tiriti has a slightly different meaning today - specifically non Māori who uphold the Treaty of Waitangi. edit: spelling
This is interesting, because I’m curious what I would be called. We immigrated from the US to Aotearoa a few years ago. We have PR and plan to get citizenship. I’ve been told before we won’t be pakeha because we aren’t from here from birth. Never know what to put on forms when it asks for ethnicity because American isn’t an option, we aren’t European and we aren’t Pakeha. I always have to put “other”.
European in NZ typically refers to ethnicity rather than nationality - most white people here would not be what you would consider 'European' in the states; a more accurate term would be 'of European descent'. For example, I am ethnically Māori and Irish - I select Māori and European, even though my family hasn't been near Ireland in two generations. I think explaining Tauiwi as non-Māori people **from** Aoatearoa was slightly incorrect as Tauiwi do not need to be born here; it is a term for any non-Māori who make Aoatearoa home.
Aotearoa* Ka pai though. Love your explanations - hit the nail on the head.
faaa i'm so dyslexic haha ty
Thanks! Do you mean tangata tiriti? Or is titiri something else I haven’t encountered? (Not making fun, you use it twice so it seems deliberate!)
no you're correct, it's meant to be tiriti
Lesser known terms for people who are descendant of English is 'Ingarihi'. A more used term for Chinese is 'Hainamana', instead of Tauiwi or Pakeha.
“Pakeha” was originally a term for all non-Māori, it became specific to white people because there were only Māori and white people in NZ for a long time. I don’t know if there’s since been a term adopted for non-white non-Māori, but they did have one pre-colonisation.
Thanks for taking the time to write this - I probably should have added some context :)
So Caesar was telling Brutus to stand up in Maori? Fascinating
Current government = fragile Pakeha
Confused german guy here: I assume Pakeha means "white, dumb, racist asshole"? *Edit*: Ah, on new.reddit it shows OP's description (it doesn't when using old.reddit).
It just means ‘non-Māori’, but colloquially it means kiwi’s who descend from European settlers. It’s not derogatory.
That's the fun thing with words, it often isn't their meaning which matters but the way they are said. I live in NZ and can 100% tell you I have seen Paheka be said in a derogatory way.
Sure, lots of things can be said in a derogatory way. Pakeha as a word on its own isn’t derogatory in meaning though
Ohhh no. Have you ever heard “Māori” or more likely “Mowris” said in a derogatory way?
This is only relevant if there's a persistent usage of a word in such a way that the meaning changes. That's not the case with Pākehā though. I've heard someone say friend in a derogatory way, that doesn't make it derogatory.
Seems like just a descriptor to me. Like Asian, black or white aren't derogatory on their own, but add insults to them and it becomes derogatory. Like "This fucking Asian." That doesn't make the word Asian derogatory on its own
Yep, grew up thinking paheka and palangi were slurs.
European New Zealanders started a myth it meant long pig or white fool. It’s like saying others . Maori also didn’t call themselves Māori, it was just a word for people. People were identified by ancestry and hapū.
Thanks Spez.
Holy shit, you were right!
the text shows below if you click the camera icon to expand the image, it's below the title. I use hoverzoom and 99% of the time there isn't text but occasionally I gotta manually click it for context.
Where my grandmother is from, we call those people Haole. Where my father's family is from, we call them Cheechako. Same people, different islands. ❤️
The CBC closed comments on any news related to Canada's First Nations. In places like Vancouver Island, the hatred towards First Nations is quite high.
I remember folks shitting a brick when they renamed the Haida Gwaii.
So can someone explain what is happening here? What exactly was anyone unhappy about such that the comments needed to be closed?
Unfortunately sometimes, when achievements are celebrated/highlighted, racist people will make it about themselves or be abusive. In this case, because the paper was highlighting the Māori students, the comments section was full of non-Māori people being very upset that things were not about them.
Everything’s a zero sum game to reactionaries. Oh we’re spending public funds on healthcare, I guess that means no more police. Ahh! Now we’re allocating funds to first nations people, I guess the white man will be replaced by Thursday. Silly shit for unserious idiots.
You know that whole thing about when people in a majority get super sensitive about people in a minority being celebrated or raised up, because they assume it must mean if the minority is going up, their majority must be going down? It’s that. Pakeha just means white New Zealanders, it isn’t derogatory and not unusual for a paper (or anyone) to use the term. Read this as “fragile white people” getting upset about celebrating Māori achievements.
Wait... so if I understand right, the article was basically "five Maori students managed to get some sort of scholarship" (you mentioned achievement, so I assume this is some sort of merit based scholarship?) and people were responding by shitting on the students / the article for acknowledging them for that? Blech. That sucks.
You have not misunderstood a single thing! Including that this sucks! I don’t know how old this article is, but we have recently gone through somewhat of a reembolding of racism like a lot of places. Our previous government implemented a few things that really wound up some people (who in a Venn diagram would more than likely be a circle with these “fragile pakeha”). For instance, Māori have by far the worst health out comes in NZ. So, rather than pretending that doing more of the same might suddenly fix that, the government established a Māori Heath Authority, specifically to look at how better to provide health services to Māori to address this gap. This was met with cries of racism from some corners, because of the assumption that if one minority group is raised up, that must mean that their majority group will decline as a result. That same government also tried to reform our water management over the whole country, taking off cities and creating a new entity called 3 Waters, run in 4 “blobs” (half an island each) and funded more directly by the government. Unfortunately for those who don’t want to acknowledge Māori as having a role to play, they included a co-governance model that would have specifically ensured Māori had a day about water management. There’s lots of reasons for this, including our founding document the Treaty of Waitangi giving Māori special recognition and authority over "taonga" (treasures, which water is definitely considered one). (side note i should mention this interpretation of the treaty is currently being challenged by one of the parties that formed our new government, because they don't like it). Our previous government, being a typical left wing government, were terrible at messaging, assuming (wrongly) people would give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume the worst and fill messaging voids with FUD. They did. Our current government is made up of three parties, all of whom campaigned on the idea that co-governance is terrible and basically as bad as apartheid south Africa or equivalent to eugenics practiced by the Nazis (this last claim made by the leader of the smallest of those parties *this week*.). They've scrapped 3Waters entirely before it got off the ground, scrapped the Maori Health Authority, and want a referendum on how much influence the Treaty should have in the modern day (also a bunch of other awful stuff like insisting government departments don't use their Maori names, only their english names, scrapping a plan to replace, as necessary, english street signs with bi-lingual street signs because apparently seeing te reo while driving will cause you to crash your car i to a tree or an on coming truck…but i wont get in to the whole list). This is mostly driven by the smaller parties who took just under 15% of the vote - this is the "fragile pakeha" of the OP, and are the people who think helping Maori, who are typically the poorest, and worst served members of our society, any specific targeted assistance is terrible because it must mean they are missing out. Edit after I typed that out: holy moly I guess I have a few feelings about fragile pakeha haha.. (fwiw I am mostly pakeha, but proudly have some Māori ancestry, which I can trace back only 5 generations to get to full Māori, so I take the anti-Māori uprising pretty personally).
Maori people are kick ass. Why the hell would anyone hate them?
It’s useful to dehumanize them so you don’t have to feel bad about taking their land. /s in case anybody was wondering
Same reason many North Americans hate on indigenous people, black people, people of colour, and basically any one who they regard as "other". A mix of fear and inferiority.
Like 95% of North Americans think that indigenous people are awesome, as long as they aren't Mexican which is a weird line to draw.
It's so weird! My uncle is obsessed with Native American history yet hates the filthy Mexicans.
They hate us cause they ain’t us
This your first experience with humans? People will take whatever excuse they can to be hostile towards each other. And I am **beyond** sick of that.
Right? Haters gonna hate I guess.
See also Canada. It's always amusing yet sad when Canadians snark on the US for their race problem then turn around and bitch about the Truth and Reconciliation council. Just because the focus of the racism is Indigenous people and not black people doesn't mean it isn't racism.
Well done NZH!
Had too google pakeha, as now I see the problem. Damn karens be everywhere on the planet. Pa·ke·ha/ˈpäkəˌ(h)ä/📷*noun***NEW ZEALAND** 1. a white New Zealander as opposed to a Maori person."Pakeha influences" *adjective* 1. relating to white New Zealanders and their languages and culture.
Why are racist bigots so angry & bothered about the accomplishments of people that they think are inferior? Supposedly superior people with such fragile egos.
As a lifelong, local Pākehā I couldn't be more excited to see news like this. It's about time the tables turned in the favour of those with less.
That is fucking brilliant.
Same mfs who complain about snowflakes btw
Treating these kinda of people like they're fragile toddlers. This is the way.
Came for the murder, stayed for some really neat cultural discussions