From Tauranga City Library’s archives
A monthly blog about interesting items in our collection
When I was a kid I remember my mother smirking as she listened to a neigbour mention they'd just had their kitchen floor freshly poly-urinated. Word malfunctions were often a source of amusement in my family. It's especially easy to mix up a word if the language you're using is not one you're adept in. In Aotearoa New Zealand this is often the case for Pākehā using Māori words. So many of our towns, rivers, mountains and so on are named using Te Reo Māori and most Pākehā, such as myself, are not at all competent users of the language. One of the way's this shows itself in writing, is in the miss-spelling of place names. For decades computers were unable to easily produce a macron, that little line over a vowel that indicates it is a long vowel rather than a short vowel. As a result, we became content to just ignore them when writing. This has increasingly been seen as quite rude by both Māori and younger generations of Pākehā.
Rude, and on occasion, embarrassing.
As an example, Weta, has been used informally, to mean poo, or excrement. Whereas Wētā, is the insect I dreaded finding in my boot as a kid. I notice the company Wētā Workshop (1987-) has begun adding macrons in it's branding. That hasn't always been the case.
Recent branding from the Wētā Worskshop Facebook Page
The Heritage and Research Team at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries recently launched the Place-name Macronator, free for anyone using a Windows computer. It's a quick copy and paste tool designed to replace Māori place names that lack macrons with their correct spelling. You can check a single word or paste a full page of HTML or an entire blog post, as long as it is plain text.
The Place name Macronator tool ready and waiting
It has its own internal database gathered from three large sources. The Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s Marae Addresses and Map document, the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) place-names database, and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s 1000 Māori Place Names list. We also added local names significant in Tauranga Moana, and common words frequently misspelled by Pākehā, such as “Māori” and “Pākehā.” You can also add your own local names that we may have missed, such as facilities or rooms specific to your workplace or community.
Here's the original source material:
You can find it on Pae Korokī, Tauranga Archives Online under the "more" menu"
Download the zipped file and then copy the files within it to a new folder on your hard drive. To use it, double click the Placename_Macronator.exe. For ease of access you might want to create a desktop shortcut.
To use it, type, or paste text into it and press "correct". Corrected text is then automatically in your clipboard ready to paste back.
Corrected text is automatically in your clipboard ready to paste back.
The first time you run the Macronator, your computer might display “Windows protected your PC.” Select "More info" and "Run anyway". The tool is safe and operates entirely offline.
If you are a student and proponent of our collective history, you probably also don't want to polyurethane over our place names either, so give the reo the respect it deserves, and head over to Pae Korokī.
Written by Harley Couper, Heritage Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries
