Candidate re-records radio ad after alleged mangling of Māori
Hearing he’d mangled Māori pronunciation for an electioneering radio ad and being forced to rerecord has left regional council candidate Russ Rimmington fuming.
‘‘I think my Māori pronuciation is as good as the person next door, it’s just total control they’re trying to inflict upon us,’’ said Rimmington, who last year was heavily criticised for comments he made about Māori at a Three Waters forum.
‘‘I think there’s bigger things like child poverty and school attendance rates that should be addressed rather than the way that I actually pronounce Māori words.’’
However, a local Ngāti Wairere historian Wiremu Puke said correct pronunciation of te reo shows respect and appreciation, and that it was good to try to get it right.
‘‘Difficulties can be overcome if people are prepared to work at it.’’
The latest chapter in Rimmington’s sometimes prickly relationship with te ao Māori came several weeks ago when he said he was asked by media company NZME to re-record radio ads for the Waikato Regional Council elections because of the quality of his te reo.
Problems focused on his pronunciation of the words Waikato and Tamahere, he said yesterday.
‘‘So I, in the end ... just rerecorded the bloody thing’’ last week, he said. The ads are now running on Newstalk ZB after his new pronunciation was deemed suitable, he added.
Rimmington described the need to re-record as ‘‘absolutely shocking’’. To the argument that pronouncing te reo correctly is important, otherwise meaning can be changed, Rimmington said: ‘‘I think there’s bigger fish to fry ... than go down that rabbit hole. That’s my feeling.’’
An NZME spokesperson in Hamilton confirmed Rimmington had been asked to re-record because the company adhered to the principle of broadcasting ads with good te reo pronunciation.
Puke, meanwhile, said he felt Rimmington had long struggled with correct te reo pronunciation, including when he was Hamilton’s mayor. ‘‘It’s something personal they need to work on themselves,’’ he said of people who struggled.
To those who might suggest that incorrect pronunciation isn’t something to get too wound up about, Puke noted that day-to-day language in modern Aotearoa included a lot more te reo that it used to. Given that, as the nation’s collective language evolved, making an effort to speak te reo words correctly was needed, Puke said.
‘‘To help keep te reo’s uniqueness, it’s important to pronounce it right.’’