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A comment on Mayor Michael Laws' attempt to prevent the Geographic Board from changing the tradititional spelling of the town of Wanganui to the PC form of "Whanganui," and thus pronounced as "Fonganui."

Sung to the tune of Peter Cape's Taumarunui on the Main Trunk Line.

The Wanganui/Whanganui debate.

The West Coast Maori dialect pronounces words spelt in Maori dictionaries with "Wha" as wa. Those who have learnt to speak Maori in up-river villages might tell you "The wanau are holding a powiri in the ware by the kowai tree." Also in the West Coast dialect, the first vowel is not pronounced when there is no consonant between two vowels.

A few years ago, a group of young Maori who had leant the Maori language in classroom lessons at the big cities, and had only heard Maori as spoken on the radio, came to Wanganui city and began complaining about how the name of the city was "mispelt" and the word was "meaningless."

They ignored the issue that many Maori place-names are mispelt, but are not decried as meaningless. Some other place-names in this category are Petone, Timaru, Akaroa and Otago; and also the local names Mangaweka, Taihape, Waiouru and Tangiwai. (They should be Peto-one, Tetiomaru, Hakaroa, Otakou, Mangateweka, Otaihape, Wahiouru and Waitangi.)

Older Wanganui townsfolk wanted to retain the old spelling of the city, as it retained the local "wa" pronunciation of words spelt in the Maori dictionary as "Wha" and usually mispronounced as "fa." The spelling of their river's name had been changed to "The Whanganui River" and now outsiders were mispronouncing it as "The Fonganui River."

There were a lot of place names around the town, such as Whangaehu, Aramoho, Kowai Park, Kaiwhaiki, Mangawhero and Kakatahi, that had long been pronounced in the local dialect as Wange'u, Aramo', Kowai Park, Kawaik', Mangawero and Kaka-tai. But the newcomers started pronouncing them as Fonga-ehu, Ara-moho, Korfai Park, Kaifaiki, Mangafero and Kaka-tahi. And locally born people, Maori and Pakeha, hated that f mispronunciation.

This song unfortunately ignores the point that no one, locally-born or newcomer, actually sounds Whanganui with an aitch; they use either a "w" sound or an "f" sound. Its composer, Dick Coker, has not lived in Wanganui.

The word "Wanganui" was the one word where the newbies had to use the dialect correctly when they spoke it. It was a reminder of the traditional dialect, and helped keep that dialect alive for use in other similar words. But the newcomers went to the Geographic Board and got the city's name optionally spelt with the Wha spelling. So the out-of-town newspapers now all write about the town as "Whanganui" and the radio and TV announcers call it Fonganui.

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This webpage put on the NZ Folksong website March 2010