Comment by timonoko

Comment by timonoko 10 months ago

Is this true that Maaori is crapped by Ænglish spelling? In all other languages long vowel is just two wovels, not some stupid umlaut on top.

timonoko 10 months ago

Yes, says ChatGPT:

The Māori word "Māori" can be transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as:

/ˈmaːɔɾi/

Here’s a breakdown:

  /ˈ/ – indicates primary stress on the first syllable
  /m/ – a voiced bilabial nasal, like the "m" in "man"
  /aː/ – a long open front unrounded vowel, similar to the "a" in "father," but held longer (the macron indicates length)
  /ɔ/ – a mid-open back rounded vowel, like the "o" in "thought"
  /ɾ/ – a tapped or flapped "r," similar to the quick "r" sound in Spanish "pero"
  /i/ – a close front unrounded vowel, like the "ee" in "see"
  This transcription represents the most common pronunciation of the word "Māori."

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TRiG_Ireland 10 months ago

It's certainly not an umlaut. Nor yet is it a trema, which is what you probably mean. It's a macron, which is commonly used to mark long vowels.

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timonoko 10 months ago

Sort-of. Because In Anglo world "aa" is "ä". Even ChatGPT thinks that it ok to use "AA" when making a Finnish morse generator.
In hindsight Maaori is not so bad. Some American Indian writing systems are just pronunciation quides for Anglos (or French). I tried to study Haida some 30 years ago, but it was too complex and miserable, because there was no actual audio clips available at that time.

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- TRiG_Ireland 10 months ago
  
  ChatGPT doesn't think, and I fail to see how it is in any way relevant to the discussion.
  Marking a long vowel with a macron has a long heritage, dating back to Ancient Greece at least. Yes, some other writing systems, such as Greenlandic, use a double vowel.
  Finnish seems to use ä, ö and å as independent letters, rather like Swedish and Danish, unlike German, were ä, ö and ü are regarded as a, o and u with a diacritical mark. These do not seem to be symbols which mark vowel length.
  I don't know Māori, but the Wikipedia page gives the alphabetical order for the language and does not list the long vowels separately, so I assume that, as with German or French, they're regarded as the standard letters with a diacritic mark added.
  
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  peterashford 10 months ago
  
  They are indeed standard letters with diacritics added - but macrons are the only diacritical marks used for Māori. Some people do use double vowels but it's less common than using macrons.
  
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