Pronunciation of Maori Common words and phrases in 5 of our languages Pronunciation of Maori The most difficult thing about speaking Maori, if you haven't grown up hearing it spoken, is the pronunciation of the vowel sounds. To English-speaking people they often sound quite different from the way they are written. However, once you get the hang of the sounds, you can try out new words because the pronunciation of each vowel always stays the same. The only thing that changes is the length of the sound. Most of the time, lengthened vowels are shown like this: ä, ë, ï, ö and ü - as in "anä te höiho - there is a horse". Sometimes they are shown with a double vowel instead: "anaa te hooiho - there is a horse". And sometimes they're not shown at all!

When two vowels occur together in a word, it's easiest to practice saying them separately until you can run them together smoothly. For example, "koe" can be practiced as "ko-e".

The only consonants to worry about are:

r	must not be rolled. You pronounce it quite like the sound of l in English, with your tongue near the front of your mouth.
p	is generally softer than in English, not an explosive sound at all.
wh	is usually pronounced like f. However in some parts of New Zealand it is spoken like an h, in others like a w, and others like wh in when.
ng	is a softer sound than in English, especially the g. The sound is similar to the middle ng in singing.