Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
Page 25
• i (ee) as in “meet”
• o (oh) as in “store”
• u (oo) as in “food”
There are eight consonants in the language (h, k, m n, p, r, t, w). All the consonants are pronounced as in English with the exception of r, which is rolled as in Italian or Spanish and which, when it falls in the middle of a word, can sound more like a soft “d.” Thus, the name Kiri, for example, can sound like “Kiddy” to the English ear.
There are also two consonant combinations which sometimes give English speakers pause: wh, which is pronounced as “f,” and ng, which is pronounced as in “song” but which can also come at the beginning of a word such as nga.
Vowels in Maori may be either long or short and this also affects the way they are pronounced. Current standard practice in New Zealand is to indicate a long vowel in written Maori with a macron (a straight line over the letter). Thus, the correct form of the word Maori is actually Māori and pa is actually pā. But Maori has been a written language for barely two hundred years and there is considerable variation in the way it has been written over time. During certain periods, for example, it has been conventional to indicate the long sound by doubling the vowel, as in paa for pā and Maaori for Māori, while in the very earliest texts there is often no indication of vowel length at all.
In the interest of consistency, I have decided not to use either the double vowel or the macron. A reader with little or no exposure to Maori can, in most cases, approximate the correct sound simply by sounding out the letters according to the guidelines above. Anyone wanting a more detailed account of the language should visit the Māori Language Commission Web site (www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz).
Another decision I have had to make is how to pluralize Maori words appearing in an English text. In Maori, changes of number, tense, etc., are not shown by any change in the word itself—the way, for example, we add “s” to nouns in English. Although, in my experience, many Maori speakers will, in fact, add “s” to certain common Maori words when they are speaking English, I have decided not do this. Thus, the word marae may refer to one meetinghouse or to more than one. The only exceptions are the words Pākehā and Māori, which I use as loan words, that is, English words borrowed from Maori, adding a plural “s” when necessary. I realize this may sound wrong to contemporary readers, but it is true to the way that many people in New Zealand (including my husband and his siblings) spoke in the 1980s when I was there and reflects the words as I first heard and learned them.
Finally, a note on English spelling. Several of the sources used in this book were written in the eighteenth century when idiosyncratic spelling and capitalization were common, even among highly educated English writers. I have taken the liberty of regularizing the spelling of many words—” posable” to “possible,” “hade” to “had,” “oyther” to “other,” and so on—as well as standardizing capitalization and punctuation.
Copyright © 2008 by Christina Thompson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Maps prepared by C. Scott Walker, Digital Cartography Specialist, Harvard Map Collection,
Nathan Marsh Pusey Library, Harvard University.
A version of “Turton’s Land Deeds” was originally published in the Australian literary journal Meanjin and was reprinted along with part of “Nana Miri” in the The Best Australian Essays 2000. An early version of “Hawaiki” appeared in the American Scholar, while a version of “Smoked Heads” was published in Salmagundi and subsequently reprinted in The Best Australian Essays 2006.
Permission to reproduce an extract from the poem “Landfall in Unknown Seas” by Allen Curnow courtesy of the copyright owner, Jenifer Curnow, and Auckland University Press.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Thompson, Christina, 1959–
Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all : a New Zealand story / Christina Thompson.—
1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59691-126-3 (hardcover)
1. Maori (New Zealand people)—First contact with Europeans. 2. Europeans—New Zealand–History. 3. Culture conflict—New Zealand–History. 4. Frontier and pioneer life—New Zealand. 5. New Zealand—Race relations–History–18th century. 6. New Zealand—Race relations–History–19th century. 7. Thompson, Christina, 1959–Marriage. 8. Interracial marriage–New Zealand–Case studies. 9. Americans–New Zealand–Biography. 10. Maori (New Zealand people)–Biography. I. Title.
DU423.F48T48 2008
933.01—dc22
2007044074
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2008
This e-book edition published in 2010
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-638-8
www.bloomsburyusa.com