Changes in the pronunciation of Māori and implications for teachers and learners of Māori

This paper discusses changes in the pronunciation of Māori and implications for teachers and learners of Māori. Data on changes in the pronunciation of Māori derives from the MAONZE project (Māori and New Zealand English with support from the Marsden fund). The project uses recordings from three sets of speakers to track changes in the pronunciation of Māori and evaluate influence from English. Results from the project show changes in both vowel quality and vowel duration and some evidence of diphthong mergers in pairs such as ai/ae and ou/au, especially amongst the younger speakers. In terms of duration the younger speakers are producing smaller length distinctions between long/short vowel pairs other than /ā, a/. We discuss the implications of such changes for those teaching Māori and for students learning Māori as a subject. These changes raise interesting questions concerning the pronunciation of Māori by future generations

/u/ fronting and /t/ aspiration in Māori and New Zealand English

This article examines the relationship between the frontness of /u/ and the aspiration of /t/ in both Māori and New Zealand English (NZE). In both languages, these processes can be observed since the earliest recordings dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century. We report analyses of these developments for three groups of male speakers of Māori spanning the twentieth century. We compare the Māori analyses with analyses of related features of the speakers' English and of the English of monolingual contemporaries. The occurrence of these processes in Māori cannot be seen simply as interference from NZE as the Māori-speaking population became increasingly bilingual. We conclude that it was the arrival of English with its contrast between aspirated and unaspirated plosives, rather than direct borrowing, that was the trigger for the fronting of the hitherto stable back Māori /u/ vowel together with increased aspiration of /t/ before both /i/ and /u/

Acoustic Analysis of Maori: Historical Data

We present initial results of an acoustic analysis of the vowel system of a native speaker of Maori, RTH, who was born in 1885. RTH was recorded in 1947 by the Mobile Disc Recording Unit of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and the tape forms part of the Mobile Unit (MU) Archive at the University of Canterbury. RTH speaks in Maori and translates his material into English, though the English contains sections of whakapapa (genealogy) which are almost pure Maori. In this paper, we compare analyses of his vowel system when he is speaking in Maori and in English and also when he is using Maori words during his translations into English. RTH would have learnt his Maori at a time when influence from English was minimal. This analysis is therefore the first step in providing a reference acoustic analysis for the Maori language and for establishing the long-term influence of English on the pronunciation of Maori and vice versa. The analysis of RTH will be combined with an analysis of the other Maori speakers included in the MU archive together with other first language Maori speakers born in the late nineteenth century

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Getting fed up with our feet

The rise and rise of New Zealand English DRESS

This paper presents an analysis of DRESS and FLEECE in the speech of 80 New Zealanders. We show that DRESS is continuing to raise as part of the New Zealand English front vowels chain shift until it has almost completely overlapped the space occupied by FLEECE. In response, FLEECE is developing a more pronounced on-glide, so that a long vowel is becoming caught up in what has been a short vowel chain shift

Social and phonetic conditioners on the frequency and degree of ‘intrusive /r/ ’ in New Zealand English 1

Intrusive /r/, together with linking /r/, is often referred to as /r/-sandhi. Most nonrhotic dialects of English exhibit /r/-sandhi (see e.g. Docherty and Foulkes 1999

Acoustic evidence for vowel change in New Zealand English

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