English is English. One of its excellent features is that it does not have all that mess of diacritical marks: accents, macrons, diaereses, etc.,--all that above-letter clutter that infests European languages.
When the English missionaries to New Zealand did their excellent work of turning stone-age Maori into a written language, they, wisely, developed a form that took care of the pronunciation without that mess. Vowels were to be pronounced as in Italian and consonants as in English. That is simple, very easy to use, and it stood us in good stead for about two hundred years
Until now. Until the insanity of 'political correctness' began its normal tyrannical work and started splashing macrons all over the place. The 'reason'? To make everyone pronounce Maori words as the Maoris do--or did, which means as they were assumed to have done. (And, yes, the plural of Maori is Maoris: that is English, and when speaking English those who are true to it form plurals in the English way; when speaking Maori they should be formed in the Maori way; when speaking Hebrew in the Hebrew way; when speaking Russian in the Russian way; etc.; etc.)
But zillions of English-speaking people are pronouncing Maori words as they pronounce English ones, and the tyrannical PC regime want to change that. And of course they are. Every language when it adopts words from other languages, quite properly, keeps its own culture and ways of pronouncing words. Trying to force people to be faithless to their language and culture is tyranny, it is PC thuggery, which in this case means forcing us to vandalise English with macaroni graffiti.
Even worse, in the case of the Maori macron tyranny, is that macrons very often are not in the fonts that people want to use on their computers, so the operating system replaces letters with a question mark or a blank or something else. The Ugly Sisters cannot force their feet into Cinderella's glass slipper.
English speakers should ignore the thuggery and vandalism of the 'politically correct' (which is never politic and never correct), and refuse to be thuggerised. The word 'Maori' and all other Maori words being used in English is perfect without that macaroni madness.
When the English missionaries to New Zealand did their excellent work of turning stone-age Maori into a written language, they, wisely, developed a form that took care of the pronunciation without that mess. Vowels were to be pronounced as in Italian and consonants as in English. That is simple, very easy to use, and it stood us in good stead for about two hundred years
Until now. Until the insanity of 'political correctness' began its normal tyrannical work and started splashing macrons all over the place. The 'reason'? To make everyone pronounce Maori words as the Maoris do--or did, which means as they were assumed to have done. (And, yes, the plural of Maori is Maoris: that is English, and when speaking English those who are true to it form plurals in the English way; when speaking Maori they should be formed in the Maori way; when speaking Hebrew in the Hebrew way; when speaking Russian in the Russian way; etc.; etc.)
But zillions of English-speaking people are pronouncing Maori words as they pronounce English ones, and the tyrannical PC regime want to change that. And of course they are. Every language when it adopts words from other languages, quite properly, keeps its own culture and ways of pronouncing words. Trying to force people to be faithless to their language and culture is tyranny, it is PC thuggery, which in this case means forcing us to vandalise English with macaroni graffiti.
Even worse, in the case of the Maori macron tyranny, is that macrons very often are not in the fonts that people want to use on their computers, so the operating system replaces letters with a question mark or a blank or something else. The Ugly Sisters cannot force their feet into Cinderella's glass slipper.
English speakers should ignore the thuggery and vandalism of the 'politically correct' (which is never politic and never correct), and refuse to be thuggerised. The word 'Maori' and all other Maori words being used in English is perfect without that macaroni madness.
