Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2013, the Māori language week 2013 starts in New Zealand today and the the theme for this year is Ngā ingoa Māori, Māori names.
As Māori and Japanese languages have similar (almost identical) pronunciations and intonations, the Māori names sound awesome and make me feel at home. It is great that many places in New Zealand (Aotearoa) are called in Māori names even in English speaking and even when English names are popular, they still retain Māori names in most cases.
It is a bit shame that English speakers in general do not bother original pronunciations of foreign words but it is good to see that Pakeha (New Zealand Europeans) are at least try to recognise original sounds. Still I can easily surprise Pakeha by pronouncing Māori sentences just like a native speaker.
As there are many free online materials like this, I would recommend fellow Japanese to learn this beautiful language, as it would wipe out their fears for pronunciation of foreign languages, especially of English.
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