Two negative Maori words and two positive

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I was wondering if maori words sounded negative or positive to someone who doesn't know the meaning

There words are

Whanau
Utu
Tapu
Koha

Two are negative two are positive. You choose

Very few members here would have the faintest idea of how to pronounce these important Maori words, so how could they know what they sounded like?

A handful of us are familiar with the Maori Language (te reo) and know the deeper cultural meanings. None of these words in themselves are bad.

It is far too simplistic to say that "two are negative and two are positive", as if words themselves could exist in separation from culture, history, tradition and the changes of meaning over time.

If you need a deep understanding to even mention Maori language the language is doomed

Last edited by enz on 19 Nov 2019, 4:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Kapai!

It's not doomed enz. These days it is treated with the respect it deserves, which has encouraged the booming renaissance of Te Reo, which is one of our official languages in New Zealand. Yes, we do take it seriously, and that is a good thing after the past colonial attempts to suppress, trivialise and destroy te reo. Happily that era is now far behind us, though there are cultural sensitivities which still need to be appreciated by non-Maori people as the healing continues.

What do the words mean?

Whanau - family
Utu - Cost
Tapu - Sacred
Koha - Gift

Kapai - Good

Agree entirely!

wikipedia doesn't agree with you on Utu, guees it's wrong

Try Google Translate.....

unsure which one is it, revenge or cost?

The overarching meaning of Utu is balance, ie reciprococity, ie the return of good will and respect to those who show it to us, respecting the mana of those who respect our mana, as a person or iwi, and the reverse - not respecting the mana of those who disrespect the mana of the iwi (tribe) and members of it.

Pakeha (white) people misunderstood utu as meaning revenge during the 19th century Land wars and this imisunderstanding is still prevalent today amongst white kiwis who don't speak te reo. Happily, more and more are learning to speak and pronounce it properly and respecting the tikanga of the language. It's a beautiful language when spoken properly, not harsh as English can be, but rounded and melodic. The voices of the best Maori speakers are like music...

Sorry I got those words mixed up

No problem! We are all on some kind of learning curve, enz

Well..even with your original wrong translation only one word: "cost", or "revenge" could be thought of as "negative".

The rest are all rather positive in meaning. It wasn't an even split between 2 negative and 2 positive.


Though its an interesting experiment to try.

They have done expirements with control groups: English speaking Americans were asked to guess what category of animal was being named in words in the language of a remote Indian tribe in the Amazon (broad categories like bird, fish, small mammal, and large mammal). Americans were quite good at guessing bird names. But that's probably because the Indian words for bird species are meant to mimic the sound the particular bird makes - so even Americans can pick out words that sound like bird noises. But the Americans were also pretty good at guessing big mammals from small mammals for some reason.

Feel free to try it again.