You must be stupid and maori.

I understand that Maori is also spoken in Whanganui.
Wanganui is not spelt correctly.

Get over yourself. You must be elderly and hearing impared.

Whanganui is a maori word.

Wanganui is an English word.

English is the language of Wanganui, thus the spelling is correct.

Its a bit like the Italians say Roma, the English Rome.

One might.

The rest would think him just another wet blanket maori apologist like Williamson and the rest of the National clowns.

Michael Laws needs to get over democracy?????

Spoken like a true Pinko.

The Wh is a ‘breathy’ one, it is certainly not a hard ‘F”.
You should try it! Just breathe out when you say the “W” running into the ‘a’and you will experience how to pronounce it.
To the untrained ear, a lot of sounds in spoken Maori are hard to discern if you are not a fluent speaker. eg the ng sound in nga, and the te which learners insist on prounouncing as “Tay’.
I can completely sympathise with the early recorders of the language. The young Wakefield had ears that could hear the breathy ‘H’ wheras the older Wakefield could not – this would explain the difference in the way that they recorded it. Older folk who have had their hearing checked will know that they loose the ability to hear some sounds, particularly in the mid range.

Michael Laws needs to get over it. He needs to accept the change gracefully, as do his elderly supporters. One would have more respect for him if he showed courage and conceeded.

Kia ora koutou. Kei te pai to koutou ra.

…Raping and pillaging the Middle East in the “name of religion” the 30 years and 100 years war over Catholicism vs. Protestantism is almost a point of humour had not so many died fighting its stupid purposes. And this justifying the misspelling of a name is ridiculous….

What the hell have the Crusades and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation wars got to to with the spelling of W(h)anganui?

They are as irrelevant as the Muslim Turks’ genocide of more than a million Christian Armenians between 1890 and 1920. the Saudis’ ban on building Christian churches, and the relentless persecution of Christians in Pakistan.

Your use of the term “red neck” explains your approach, Jeff83 – liberal cringe.

Wrong, wrong. It’s Aoraki/Mt Cook, not Aorangi/Mt Cook.
Typical Auckland Herald ignorance of the South Island and Ngai Tahu spelling.
The plonkers probably think that Mount Cook is somewhere in Wellington anyway.

A better compromise for this issue would have been to make all official spelling Wanganui with the option to change to Whanganui for businesses. John Key is truelly a so called “liberal” who truelly believes in big government.

As I have said before the Maori party could demand a law requiring white people to engage in beastiality and National would pass it without a second thought or hesitation (whilst sitting up straight and folding their arms)

http://www.nightcitytrader.blogspot.com

Tell you what we’ll take these newcomers history as seriously as they take ours which is several thousand years older and invloves a lot less stone age aspect.

Firstly your statement make little to no sense.

“newcomers ” defined means “somebody who or something that has recently arrived, appeared, or been introduced”, being that Maori have been here 700 years, and we 150 years your statement reads literally we will take our history seriously when we take our history seriously.

Interpreting your statement (i.e. putting on my red neck hat) I imagine you meant the “newcomers” in terms of their history. Whilst this doesn’t really make any sense, will accept it for the sake of debate. Maori history goes back through Polynesian routes and has much traditions. The fact that they were less advanced does not infer some automatic superiority. Technology is often linked to needs.

Yes our ancestry is rich in heritage, but I wouldn’t say our actions are necessary great in purpose for allot of it. Raping and pillaging the Middle East in the “name of religion” the 30 years and 100 years war over Catholicism vs. Protestantism is almost a point of humour had not so many died fighting its stupid purposes. And this justifying the misspelling of a name is ridiculous.

The fact Maori was not a written language until the Missionaries arrived is irrelevant, as the language existed alongside its oral rules. Those rules were subsequently included into the written language.

I wonder what the apartheid party are now going to set their sights on?

You do? Wow, I never saw that one coming

Yet Williamson said this:

…I believe that alternative naming respectfully acknowledges the correct spelling of the Maori word Whanganui…

He thus accepts the Geographic Place Names board, a politically appointed group answerable only to him, as the final authority on the English-language spelling of a Maori place name.

If that’s Williamson’s logic there is certainly room to challenge it.

Clearly, what’s needed are two boards: ones for place names as spelled in the Maori language, and another for place names as spelled in the English language.

Sorry for the formatting. When I corrected it my edit was rejected as spam.

Has the Geographic Place Names board (the poari at the centre of this row) hacked into Kiwiblog?

…Simply disgusting that we should have to spell these Maori placenames correctly.

RRM once again jumps to the assumption that the spelling is the correct one in English, and we are talking about English.

RRM’s sneering use of the word "darkies" is a snide way of accusing those who oppose the "Wh" change to be racists.

Perhaps the racism rather lies in the increasing move towards racial separation under the regime of Key and his Maori activist allies.

Re Inventory2's 12.14 post saying it is hard to fault Maurice Williamson's logic in today's announcement…

Williamson said this:

…I believe that alternative naming respectfully acknowledges the correct spelling of the Maori word Whanganui…

But the debate is about a town name in English, not in Maori. What is the correct spelling in Maori is not necessarily the correct spelling in English.