How to pronounce "Māori"...

[Canterbury]

Hey, that's perfect for learning how to pronounce "Māori". Great video!

I thought too much heavy emphasis on the "a" was a mistake Europeans make? Or is it because we don't pronounce the "o" at all? Like MAH-ree. That's the classic poor European pronunciation isn't it?

Yeah, it's better to pronounce both the "ā" and the "o", as best you can. But don't worry if it's hard, a close enough approximation is fine.

Japanese R can be right but can also be wrong because Japanese R is non-specified for centrality: that is, it can also be L. But Spanish/Italian single R (or the TT in American English kitty) is the right sound.

Fair enough. I've heard Japanese and Koreans here in Australia pronounce it better than a lot of English speakers do, and South Americans almost perfectly.

 

[Leathaface]

I pronounce it Mow-Ree (the mow is pronounced like "how") It seems I am pronouncing it slightly wrong.

 

[Uberfrog]

This is a Maori guy who went to a full Maori school, so only learned to speak English after he went to high school. Here is him pronouncing Maori words, I've time stamped him saying "Maori"

Basically, most European backgrounders I know have too short an emphasis on the "ao" and don't roll their r enough.
Fortunately my family are Scots so the rolling the r is natural for us

EDIT: Grr I can't get the timestamp to work on the forum. But it's at 40 seconds

This is a very useful video in a slightly confusing thread! It doesn’t help that the phonetic explanations here seem catered towards an American audience. Using “Mouldy” as a guide for instance would have far too much emphasis on the d to work in England!

I think the British pronunciation is pretty close to the proper way, with the exception being the r sound. I’d heard Kiwis pronouncing it similar to the “moldy” way and assumed they were correct but the first vowel sound really does seem to be more like Mao.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Someone in YT chat suggested English speakers should say 'mouldy' to get approximately the right sound, but I presume you would have to slightly change the 'ld' bit to a slightly softer sound. Not sure what the locals think but it seems to work?

At any rate I used to pronounce it like mow-ree (mow like how) so at least mouldy gets me a better vowel sound.

 

[Ezumiyr]

In short: it‘s pronounced exactly as if it would be a Swiss word
I prefer to say it different though and I don‘t see much reason to change that. After all, I also don‘t pronounce London, Munich or Paris in the native language and dialects.

Kinda weird comparison, as "swiss" doesn't exist as a language.
Anyway, "maori" is pronounced [ˈmaːɔɾi] in maori, with a "ɾ", that is an alveolar flap, and not a trill like in southern german dialects. That sound exists in various english dialects though, like Scottish where it can replace the "r" after consonants, but in other dialects it would be how dentals (/t/ and /d/) are pronounced (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapping). Back to german dialects, it would be more the kind of sounds you'll hear near the Netherlands and low german-speaking areas.
It's also quite typical of Polynesian languages and on a personal note, reminds me of the Tahitian accent of some family members.

 

[Siptah]

Kinda weird comparison, as "swiss" doesn't exist as a language.

I do know that, obviously . And yet, I stand by my remark and it is easily comprehendible for everyone with a remote knowledge of swiss . I fear it is a complete riddle for everyone else though.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I would have had it closer in my head naturally if not for the ā. Dictionaries have always told me that that means that the vowel is spelled out as the name of the vowel, so may-OR-ree. Here we're clearly using a different set of conventions.I was misled by this piece of (mis) information.

 

[Uberfrog]

I would have had it closer in my head naturally if not for the ā. Dictionaries have always told me that that means that the vowel is spelled out as the name of the vowel, so may-OR-ree. Here we're clearly using a different set of conventions.I was misled by this piece of (mis) information.

More often the macron denotes a long vowel (as in this case), rather than emphasis (which is what you seem to be referring to). However, the particular pronunciation of that vowel, especially in a diphthong as in "Māori" really does depend on the language. There's not really a one-size-fits-all solution to accents and diacritics, unfortunately

 

[Ezumiyr]

I do know that, obviously . And yet, I stand by my remark and it is easily comprehendible for everyone with a remote knowledge of swiss . I fear it is a complete riddle for everyone else though.

Given you indicated living in Lucerne in your profile I guessed you meant german swiss, and I explained in my comment that "ɾ" didn't exist in southern german dialects.
If you spoke Balsedütsch it could be different though, I guess, but that's an exception and how many people do still speak that dialect?

Anyway, it's also weird to stand by your remark. The only way it could still be valid is if you thought Switzerland spoke so many languages that "swiss pronounciation" actually means "a melting pot of phonems from different languages". The thing is that it still doesn't feature a "ɾ", and that it would sound a bit disrespectful towards maori. But that's quite unlikely, so I'll just consider you don't like to be wrong or something like that.

 

[WillowBrook]

I would have had it closer in my head naturally if not for the ā. Dictionaries have always told me that that means that the vowel is spelled out as the name of the vowel, so may-OR-ree. Here we're clearly using a different set of conventions.I was misled by this piece of (mis) information.

Yeah, I asked about that on the previous page, and zaarin kindly explained that long vowels in English are simply different than long vowels in other languages due to the mysterious great vowel shift of many centuries ago.

 

[Siptah]

Given you indicated living in Lucerne in your profile I guessed you meant german swiss, and I explained in my comment that "ɾ" didn't exist in southern german dialects.
If you spoke Balsedütsch it could be different though, I guess, but that's an exception and how many people do still speak that dialect?

Anyway, it's also weird to stand by your remark. The only way it could still be valid is if you thought Switzerland spoke so many languages that "swiss pronounciation" actually means "a melting pot of phonems from different languages". The thing is that it still doesn't feature a "ɾ", and that it would sound a bit disrespectful towards maori. But that's quite unlikely, so I'll just consider you don't like to be wrong or something like that.

Baslerdütsch is spoken in the city of Basel, and while this city isn't that large, you don't have to be afraid of it dying out. Several of my friends speak it and I hear it daily in conversations. Everbody from the german speaking parts of Switzerland is speaking in their dialect, no one uses swiss high german or swiss standard german for conversations. The surrounding area of Baselland speaks related dialects. In real Baslerdütsch, it is ʁ, however, not ɾ.

That said, based on the short video provided by OP to which my remark was directed, I would have said it sounded like Churerdütsch. But that's kind of the joke: swiss dialects have such rich variations that you'll always find one for almost every pronunciation. And since the pronunciation of Maori as indicated in that video isn't very exotic sounding anyway, you'd probably find people from several villages and cities that would say it similarly on first try. Considering ɾ, look at p2740 of this document: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/153504/1/2018_Leemann-et-al.pdf. It's by far the most common r variant in german speaking Switzerland. Alemannic wikipedia (yes, there is such a thing) directly states that ɾ from Alemannic dialects and Romansh are the same as in Maori btw, but as you can gather from above linked document, this is only partially correct.

 

[Zaarin]

ɾ from Alemannic dialects

Huh, I didn't know there were German dialects with flapped R.

 

[nzcamel]

This is a Maori guy who went to a full Maori school, so only learned to speak English after he went to high school. Here is him pronouncing Maori words, I've time stamped him saying "Maori"

Basically, most European backgrounders I know have too short an emphasis on the "ao" and don't roll their r enough.
Fortunately my family are Scots so the rolling the r is natural for us

EDIT: Grr I can't get the timestamp to work on the forum. But it's at 40 seconds

FYI: The gentleman (bless him) may be great with pronunciation; but he's not so good re history - Maori have only been in NZ for 800 years; not the 2000 he suggests.

 

[bite]

I will say, one of the things I love about Civ and this forum, is how you use the game to increase your knowledge about the world, and it has been really cool watching everyone learn Maori pronunciations

 

[ezysquire]

I'll take "not bad."

How about pretty good? There are plenty of Kiwis who would have said it worse. Ka pai rā tēnei mahi

 

[Turrdy]

In short: it‘s pronounced exactly as if it would be a Swiss word

I approve of this message. Though, I'd say the o in Maori is a bit shorter than I would naturally pronounce it.

"swiss" doesn't exist as a language.

That's rude to say to a Swiss.
I know, to count as a proper language you'll need "rulebooks" for grammatics and spelling and the Swiss dialect doesn't have that. But still. Other German speaking people (like Germans or Austrians) don't understand any of it (not exaggerating). Which kinda makes it feel like a different language.

 

[shaglio]

I would have had it closer in my head naturally if not for the ā. Dictionaries have always told me that that means that the vowel is spelled out as the name of the vowel, so may-OR-ree. Here we're clearly using a different set of conventions.I was misled by this piece of (mis) information.

I had mistakenly been pronouncing it as may-OR-ree too. But after watching the video in the OP and reading other posters' comments, I am even more confused. I'm currently rotating between:

MAO-ree as in Chairman Mao
MOE-ree as in the Stooge
MOO-ree as in what a cow says
MAU-ree as in Povich

 

[Guandao]

No, he promptly fell off a glacier. I don't think he spoke in the R&F video, either, though, did he?

He did speak in the Rise and Fall cinematic, for most of it.

 

[Kimiimaro]

He did speak in the Rise and Fall cinematic, for most of it.

Almost everything, except for his "daughter" saying "...always."

And except the Nazis knocking at the Dutch door, I guess.

 

[Zaarin]

He did speak in the Rise and Fall cinematic, for most of it.

Shows that I turned off the opening cinematic ages ago. Still, I took this cinematic as a direct continuation of that one, with the daughter speaking in the World Congress, so I didn't find it jarring at all that Sean Bean didn't have any lines.