Māori English, eh?
Areader has asked us to discuss Mā ori English. It so happens that Andreea Calude and I were recently asked to write on this for an Encyclopedia of World Englishes.
Today I focus on pronunciation. Next week Andreea will cover structure and vocabulary.
We cannot discuss Mā ori English (ME) without first saying what we mean, since it is a term that linguists use but which has relatively little salience in the general population. Early references describe it as English with a Mā ori-influenced pronunciation or spoken mainly by Mā ori children learning English as a second language.
By the 1990s, as it spread to more speakers, many of whom were monolingual speakers of New Zealand English (NZE), ME was recognised by linguists as a legitimate variety of NZE, rather than an outcome of second language learning processes.
Importantly, it was acknowledged that the influence of te reo Mā ori might be indirect or historical, since many ME speakers were not fluent in te reo. It was also recognised that ME was not spoken only by people with Mā ori ethnicity, since many Pā kehā speakers adopt some of its characteristics.
Indeed, a good predictor of the likelihood of producing ME features has proved to be a Mā ori ‘‘orientation index’’, which reflects a speaker’s social and family networks as much as their ethnicity.
Both ME and Pā kehā English should be considered legitimate varieties of New Zealand English (NZE), sharing many of the characteristic pronunciation features of NZE. These include those vowel pronunciations that often confuse nonNew Zealanders, such as the loss of the vowel contrast in words like beer and
bear, or the ‘‘shift’’ in the vowels in words like pan and pen that make them sound to British ears like pen and pin respectively.
There are relatively few features that are more characteristic of ME. Some are general voice quality differences; for example, perceptual studies have shown that ME is associated with creakier voices.
It is also claimed that ME has a characteristic rhythm, which can be heard for instance in recordings of comedian Billy T. James. Oversimplifying somewhat, we can characterise languages as syllable-timed, with a ‘‘machine-gun’’ rhythm in which all syllables are of relatively equal duration (eg. French or Mā ori), or as stress-timed, with a ‘‘morsecode’’ rhythm in which syllables can be long or short, with the longer ones generally the stressed syllables that carry the rhythmic beat, as in the English words reSPONsiBIlity or CIRcumNAviGAtion.
While NZE has been identified as more ‘‘syllable-timed’’ than, say, British English, this is particularly true of ME. This is an historical influence of te reo which has helped give ME its identity.
Some differences in individual sounds are stronger in older speakers and bilingual Mā ori/English speakers, suggesting again an indirect influence of te reo.
For instance, while general NZE has vowels in words like fish and chips that Australians describe as fush and chups,
ME has vowels not very different from the Australian feesh and cheeps.
This is an influence not of Australian English, but rather of the te reo vowel sound represented by the letter ‘‘i’’ in written Mā ori. Similarly, /t/ sounds, particularly at the beginnings of words, are not heavily aspirated in ME. That is, they do not have a strong puff of air following them. This puff of air helps keep the /t/ sound distinct from /d/ in English, but this is not needed in te reo Mā ori, which has no /d/ sound.
So while linguists recognise a ME accent, its distinctiveness largely involves the relative strengths of general NZE features. Check back next week for evidence from vocabulary and grammatical structures.
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