Does anybody know where I can get a guide to help me pronounce the towns correctly ?
Does anybody know where I can get a guide to help me pronounce the towns correctly ?
Listen to Radio NZ news and weather. Good on you for wanting to get it right
Ps - ask for any specifically and we can give you a phonetic breakdown.
This isn't quite you're looking for but it may be of interest: http://www.korero.maori.nz/resources/map.html
Don't ask an old Kiwi (like me) because we learned to pronounce the Maori words with a Pakeha slant. Ask the kids - they're learning the correct pronunciation in school.
For a speaker of languages other than English, I don't find it too difficult. It's quite a phonetic (like Italian, German, other Polynesian languages) language, I find, so most is pronounced as it is written Except for the odd thing like 'wh' sounding something like 'f', and sometimes the 'au' sounding more like 'ou'.
I think it also should be considered that not all speakers of Maori pronounce all things the same way, just like you would get regional differences in other languages.
The most significant difference is the extent to which it is a syllable-timed language - that often foxes me!
A Maori elder once told me that for English-speaking people, think of Maori words as though they were French makes pronunciation easier! Also, there are no dipthongs - i.e. all vowels are pronounced separately - but then sort of merged as you say them. I made some real clangers when I first arrived. My best was probably a road in Tauranga ("Tau" to rhyme with a sound half way between "now" and "toe" and then "ong", "a"). The road was "Poike Road". I pronounced it "poyk" when it should be "po ee kay". It caused a laugh - BUT because I was trying to get it right, everyone was really helpful.
There really isn't a right way and a wrong way to pronounce a word in a language foreign to the one you are speaking. If you are speaking English it is quite alright to use English pronunciation or Maori pronunciation, whichever you are happiest with.