Street name chosen by Iwi 'too long'

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I wouldn't trust any test - especially since they invented false positives. But then I don't really trust doctors that much either.

Ever since one of them told me I couldn't have babies.

Cue Rolling Eyes emoji followed by Fainting one...

SNAP! Well, except for telling me I couldn't have babies I worked that bit out for myself.
Hang on, a Dr did tell us we wouldn't be able to have any more kids. Since SWMBO was 76 at the time and had the birdcage whipped out of her playpen about 12 years earlier, and i was about to get an apple corer dealing to my prostate the next morning at 79 yrs of antiquity - - we couldn't argue with her diagnosis.    The Doc was laughing as she told us, she was proved right BTW. 

Except I was 30 odd when that news was conveyed after a lot of fertility testing. I had my daughter five years later.

It was a bit of a shock to me and the doc!  "I don't quite know how to tell you this Michele but..."

[C_T_Russell]

Who says Karangahape Road ?  We develop our own shorthand for long words.  Some won't be happy with what the locals will call it, but the English language is always evolving...I live down the road from TK...and up the road from TA.

That kind of defeats the purpose though if it just encourages people to use shorthand names?

[Oh_hunnihunni]

One of the things I really like about te reo is the way we are absorbing it and enriching our personal vocabs (note the shortening of 'vocabularies') in the process, painlessly and without effort. Our human languages are all, with very few exceptions, full of imported words and phrases, mangled appropriations and adopted thievery that colours and expands our communication skills.

It is part of being human to want to express ourselves, to want to understand others, and to do that we use words and sounds as they suit us. The problem arises though when we start thinking some sounds made into words are 'bad', or of less value than others. That some languages are more important than others. The reality is they are all just sounds human beings use to communicate. They cannot be good, bad, better or worse, they are just noise.

It is the humans using them that make them anything more. Or less.

[Lilith7]

According to this most of us recognise more words than we realise.



https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/news/2023/m...stood.html

“It initially came about because a couple of University of Canterbury linguistics lecturers were listening to their preschoolers chatting and singing in the backseat after picking them up from preschool. They were singing Māori songs, using the right sound patterns but making up the words. For instance, Māori words never end in a consonant and their mimicking showed they had understood that – they understood what we call phonotactic sound patterns,” she says. 
“And so, the lecturers thought, ‘if children are picking up this knowledge about the Māori language sound system, what about adults?’” 


When they started to research the topic, they found that most New Zealanders not only have great understanding of Māori sounds, but they also subconsciously recognise a lot of words.

“Teachers of second languages advise you to have movies with the language you want to learn on in the background as you go about your day. The more you can build up sound patterns and word knowledge, it’s going to be helpful. By understanding that people already have a knowledge of Māori sound patterns and words, we’re hoping that will encourage more people to learn Māori.” 
The findings support events such as Māori Language Week, the use of bilingual road signs and increased use of te reo Māori in public places. 
“Our newest findings show that people really can’t define these words that they subconsciously recognise. Non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have a considerable knowledge about a word before they know its actual meaning.”

[Zurdo]

I think it is part of our accent - written Maori uses long vowels, and we automatically put those long vowels into our speech. There are 2 ways we will pronounce a word like Take in isolation...or Puke.

[alpha111]

That Village in Anglesey, Wales called Llanfairpwllgwyngyll now has to hide in shame as it's so short compared to those others.