English speakers don’t say camembert like the French, with a nasalised second ‘m’ and a raspy uvular ‘r’. We say ‘cammim-beer’.
It is an approximation, using the sounds available to us in the phonological system of NZ English.
Place-names and other linguistic borrowings are pronounced with these sounds because they are tokens of communication, not virtue-signalling devices as Lush et al would have us believe.
In an exactly analogous way, Maori has borrowings like ‘miraka’ for milk, ‘paihikara’ for bicycle, ‘Poneke’ for Port Nicholson – even ‘kumara’ was originally a borrowing from Quechua.
These aren’t racist, or disrespectful – just standard linguistic practise common to every language in the world, and if anyone is being disrespected in this instance, it is the people who live in these towns, who have every right to say these places as they feel.
To the say the reverse is something out of fascist doctrine and frankly, racist.
- Christopher Brausch
