Developing a Māori language pronunciation tool based on a Māori speaker database

Abstract

The MAONZE project (Māori and New Zealand English) uses recordings from three sets of speakers to track changes in the pronunciation of Māori and evaluate influences from English. The first group of speakers were born in the late nineteenth century and recorded mostly in 1946-48. Most of these speakers are part of the Radio New Zealand Mobile Unit (MU) archive in the Origins of New Zealand English (ONZE) project at the University of Canterbury. The second group of speakers are kaumātua/kuia (elders) born between 1920 and 1940, and the third group are young speakers born between 1970 and 1990. In the 2011 & 2014 NWAV-AP conferences we reported results from the project showing changes in both vowel quality and vowel duration (for all age groups and both genders) and evidence of diphthong mergers especially amongst the younger speakers. We also indicated that female speakers from all three age groups were ahead of the male speakers in terms of raising the short vowels /e/ and /o/ and in glide weakening in the diphthongs. The young women are also in advance of the young men in /u/ fronting. In this presentation we describe work the results of trialling and developing several phases of a computer-based aid that assists learners to improve their own pronunciation of Māori. The aid allows users to get real time feedback on their own pronunciation of individual vowels, diphthongs and commonly mispronounced Māori words. The aid allows users to listen to and compare their pronunciations with ‘gold standard’ pronunciations of kaumātua (elder males) or kuia (elder females) by drawing on the speaker database developed by the MAOZNE project. Further developments will allow users to compare themselves with other speaker age groups. This current research is supported by a University of Auckland Strategic Initiatives Fund (SRIF) grant