While the proposition to replace road-signs as they fall into disrepair with flash new ones incorporating, indeed accentuating, the native-tongue equivalence of the English written words fomerly predominant on said signs has inspired considerable debate, and derision too, it’s important to relax and look on the bright side.
Those of us having endured the experience of travelling in a self-powered conveyance, basically a wheeled can, full of offspring, some of them yours in manners and likeness – others perhaps emulating the Devil’s spawn depending on mood-swing and duration of incarceration in the rolling container, will be familiar with the “I-Spy” game: the boredom-buster of millenia past, mentioned, in fact, in rare, unauthorised, but nevertheless extant, versions of the Talmud as a device employed during the travels from Babylon to the Holy Land in order to entertain children and deprive adults of their sanity.
Imagine the fun and opportunity for education to be had by combining “I-Spy” with “Guess-my-Meaning” as new words are encountered, or being enlightened with new and profound meanings to old names previously taken for granted: buried metaphors ready and waiting to be disinterred and revitalised like zombie zingers.
Te Urewera is a wonderful example. Te is straightforward enough: an h-less The, while Ure is straightforward too, if somewhat more sensitive: a simple noun pertaining to the principal, primary, prominent, call it what you will, component of male undercarriage, often believed to compete with the brain in decision-making. But it’s the third component: wera, a participle or adjective describing the condition of the component whose meaning, like the Urewera ranges themselves, is shrouded, clouded and misty: is it burnt as in exposed far too long away from soothing shade on a hot summer’s day while concurrently lacking the application of high-SPF balm? Or is it burning as on the Monday morning following a frenzied, but somewhat hazy, Friday-night hookup in Hamilton following an important business event?
The possibilities for family conversations may never be as ripe as on the road-trip of the future with our new knowledge-basket and translations for company.
