I guess they didn’t want people to end up calling it P Road

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    What percentage of NZ could actually pronounce it though? It’s an absolute mouthful.

    • Longpork_afficianado@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      Papa-kanga-horo-horo. Eight syllables, pretty straightforward. My Māori is pretty trash, but after one read of it and a handful of times saying it out loud it’s pretty simple.

      My advice to anyone complaining about it is to just say it out loud a few times. I guarantee that by the time you’ve said it to the moving company, the power company, the insurance company and your mum, you’ll have it locked down.

      It also has the added bonus of being completely unique, so there’s no chance of your ambulance being dispatched to park terrace on the other side of town while you’re choking on park road.

        • Longpork_afficianado@lemmy.nz
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, Māori is actually pretty easy to pronounce if you break it apart. There are only five vowel sounds and they don’t change depending on context like with English. The only downside is that names are often comprised of several words smooshed together, so you have to pick it apart yourself the first time you read it.

          • Ozymati@lemmy.nz
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            1 year ago

            If I can say shmutzfangmatten then I can say Papakangahorohoro. I bet half the people complaining wouldn’t be if they were trying to name it for a (hypothetical) historical German doormat factory instead of giving it a perfectly cromulent Maori name (I think something to do with earthquakes?).

            • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz
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              1 year ago

              I definitely couldn’t pronounce shmutzfangmatten though, and I doubt most of NZ could either. I also think there would be a similar push back if you tried to name a street that.

              Kinda a ridiculous hypothetical to be honest.

    • eagleeyedtiger@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know man. It would just take a couple of tries to get it and then get used to it like pretty much anything new?

      Honestly I’ve never cared what the name of the street I lived on was or how long it is.

    • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Eh Māori stuff is generally reasonably easy to pronounce, I’d say that having to constantly type it out would be a far bigger issue!

    • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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      1 year ago

      Get over yourself, we can al do Ngāruawāhia well enough cant we?

      I’m 50 this coming birthday, had little Te Reo at small white town NZ schools, lived in the UK for 1/3 of my adult life, and would have little issue with that as my street address

        • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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          1 year ago

          with the eye’s on it in the media and people like you getting upset over it - I doubt it, unless you/they are deliberately being obtuse

          • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz
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            1 year ago

            That is a spectacularly out of touch comment to be honest, not everyone spends hours reading the news and arguing about it with strangers on the Internet, you know.

            • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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              1 year ago

              oh my god - just give up. Its not that hard a name to spell when we have places like Foveaux Strait, Balmacewen, Corstorphine just to name a few non Te Reo name that are ‘hard to spell’ or are a ‘mouthful’

              • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz
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                1 year ago

                Those are also a mouthful, and are probably a hassle for the people that live there. I don’t see how that makes creating a headache for these people acceptable?