Miraz Jordan

Today I visited Sian in Porirua for my kirituhi. We chatted, then Sian drew a beautiful work in felt pen. I approved and she went ahead with inking. The negative space represents water, the feathers represent birds and the ‘cabbage tree’ is for plants. I’m thrilled with it.

Down in Porirua some of the pohutukawa are starting to flower. A sign that Christmas is close.

Thanks to @bix for the pointer to this interesting article. I was specially caught by this sentence:

The ability to disregard the opinions from the group that is being disadvantaged, the ability to escape accountability for actions, and the ability to benefit from others’ oppression are at the heart of why blackfishing is so damaging.

And substitute any number of other practises for ‘blackfishing’.

White Instagram Influencers Have Created a New Form of Blackface

I only ever learned our awful national anthem, God Defend New Zealand, in English. These days many sing it in Te Reo. Here’s verse 1:

E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa

Why a photo of my left forearm, wrist and hand? (In some languages they would all be the same word) With any luck, this is a Before photo. Updates to come in a few days. 🤞🏽

Black Ink 2: another superb Mac app from @danielpunkass! If you love words, you’ll love this. I’m now a fan of the free Wall Street Journal puzzles. Tab goes from clue to clue, arrow keys select cross words, while red tells me if I’m wrong. BI 2 leaves my brain free to solve.

Moreover, many native English speakers pronounce the Māori word ‘ngai’ as just ‘nai’, but that initial sound should move the tongue way back, tip down so it’s like the sound many make in the word ‘singing’ (not those who make a clear ‘g’ sound). Some sounds are hard to move.

Pronunciation fascinates me: exactly where do tongue, lips etc go to sound out words? English speakers put their tongue tip just behind the top teeth to start a word like ‘nock’ (as in arrow). But ‘knock’ starts the same way — these days. Once it began with a ‘k’ in the throat.

As always, the latest NativLang video (10 minutes) is extremely interesting: What English does - but most languages can’t:

English has unusual linguistic features most other languages don’t! These skills really make English unique compared to other languages around the world.

Usually in New Zealand when a house rolls and shakes around like this it’s because of an earthquake. Today it was the delivery truck refining the position of the house. These folks will have a panoramic view of the hill in front of them.