NZ First anti-Green ads will backfire, but Kingi restaurant fiasco perfect ACT Party culture war propaganda 

1. Why don’t they use Kingy as in thingy and dinghy

2. Actually the Greens would declare any unicorns to be pests, and would have them shot or poisoned immediately. (Going on a fairly traumatic experience in my tiny rural valley this last weekend…)

   • Kheala: “Going on a fairly traumatic experience in my tiny rural valley this last weekend…”

     Tell us more, tell us more!

     Though I think that I can guess….

     • I’ve tried to write it out elsewhere – below on this thread I think. I’m still trying to process it. It’s like, it happened, but I still don’t believe it. It has changed my perception of everything I thought was happening, ‘green-wise’.

       • Kheala: “I’ve tried to write it out elsewhere – below on this thread I think.”

         I’ve looked. No sign of it thus far.

     • Trying again:
       On Saturday a group of Greens and hunters went through my remote valley, shooting at just about everything that moved that was not a farm animal. They have left a feeling of devastation, and have changed the beautiful, delicate eco-system that we had here for years. The birds, the wildlife that are now gone were like my family. We had been through earthquakes and cyclones together, over a few years.

       The shooting on Saturday went from just after 9.00 am through to about 3.30 pm (+ some spotlighting in the evening, then again briefly on Sunday am.) At times it was just a few metres from my home, so that it echoed through the house without warning. These were not random or sporadic shots, but sustained shooting.

       I phoned a friend. She too is a Greenie. When I first described what was happening she said I should probably call the police. Then when I told her who it was, everything changed. They were “allowed” to do this, as all those birds etc were “not natives”. And the shooters had been sent out because there might be some wallabies in the area. (I’ve never seen a wallaby here.)

       My Green friend also said that they had to have completed their shooting/ culling (whatever) asap, so that they could claim their newly available govt funding. (Note – They didn’t clean up afterwards; the hawks have now descended. Some will go into the creek which is source of my drinking water.)

       • Kheala: Jeezus….. That’s an awful story.

         Quite aside from the woke leftery and social justice warrior stuff which now infests the Green party, my chief other beef with them is that many of them utterly fail to see anything wrong with what you’ve described here. They seem to have lost sight of the nuances of environmentalism and conservation.

         Many years ago, as part of my uni studies, I took courses on issues to do with animal rights. That study completely changed my views.

         Prior to that, I’d believed that only earnest teenage girls angsted over this stuff and adopted vegetarianism as a consequence. However: at uni, I discovered that philosophers consider the debate over animal rights to have been won, and by those in support. It was an eye-opener for me.

         “….have changed the beautiful, delicate eco-system that we had here for years.”

         Exactly. It may be difficult for many Greens to accept, but no amount of conservation can return the NZ environment to what it was prior to human settlement. The critters and plants brought by those humans (including the Polynesians), along with humans themselves, have brought about irreversible changes in the environment.

         Said environment has adapted, both to introduced creatures, and to the gaps in the ecosystem brought about by extinctions, which occurred both before and after the first Europeans arrived.

         The best that we can hope for now is a balance of sorts between all those living things.

         “…+ some spotlighting…”

         I’m not very knowledgeable in this area, but I understood that spotlighting is illegal, at least on public land. Some years back, there was a court case involving somebody spotlighting on DoC land and killing a camper. Maybe the land in your area doesn’t fall into that category? But if it does, there’d be questions to be asked about that.

         • Spotlighting is ok’d here – mainly for possums. That was not the worry – I’m used to it, also to the rabbit shooters, duck shooters, deer hunters etc. Those are all regular and safe.
           No, Saturday was quite different. I felt personally threatened. I did not go out of the house all day.

           For comic relief I try to think of them as mere Daleks, rushing around going “Exterminate…exterminate…exterminate..”

           But there was a threatening, bullying atmosphere, along with their high-powered rifles.

           • I’m sorry you went through that Kheala.
             Unfortunately the conservation of “balance” is gone, intersectional greens/forest and bird want Gondwana and they will wade through buckets of dead and left to rot animals to get there.
             Any disagreement will be denied, lied about and steamrollered.
             It’s saddening to see what Eugenie and company are doing to tahr at the moment too -shooting them with buckshot to rot on the hill, what an arrogant waste of life and resource. No plant has gone or is in danger of going extinct from them but no room for compromise.
             Let’s hope they get their electoral comeuppance in September.

             • KC, I strongly recommend that all those who have been negatively affected by the D.O.C. mass slaughter of the Tahr commence a class action suit NOW, …against DoC, for that atrocity. I am dead serious! With the right barrister, they will win their case, and DoC may have to pause and think for once, before they pull their next idiocy stunt.

           • Kheala: “For comic relief I try to think of them as mere Daleks…”

             Heh! Nice…and sadly accurate.

             “….their high-powered rifles.”

             Hmm…not the sort banned by the gummint, I hope?

             Keepcalmcarryon: “Unfortunately the conservation of “balance” is gone, intersectional greens/forest and bird want Gondwana and they will wade through buckets of dead and left to rot animals to get there..”

             Indeed. It’s unobtainable, but they seem not to care how much death they cause in its futile pursuit.

             “Let’s hope they get their electoral comeuppance in September.”

             Christ….I most sincerely hope so. It certainly won’t be my fault if they don’t.

3. NZF just show their gross ignorance, yet again;

   ‘accompanied by a caption that says: “But unfortunately money doesn’t just fall from the sky’

   Well actually it does. Officially it is known as helicopter money.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money

   It’s just another version of the long-standing tradition of central banks ‘printing’ money into existence (to pay for the interest charged on most loans, amongst other things).

   What a good thing it will be when the Greens finally disappear up the orifice of their own political correctness and anti-environmentalism, to be replaced by a genuine environmental party, perhaps (if the political system last long enough for that to happen -something I very much doubt considering the rate of implosion of the world economy and everything else.

   ACT. Does that still mean Association of Consumers and Taxpayers?

   If it does, it rather disconcerting how unconcerned the prominent members of the party are that the entire consumer-driven economic system is on its last legs and that NZ is more-or-less totally unprepared for the conditions that will prevail shortly.

   I know we should not judge people by their appearance but when I see David Seymour I always get the vision of a Muppet, particularly Kermit the frog. That said, I believe Kermit would show more long-term wisdom that anyone in the ACT party.

4. “White fragility” is often exhibited when people who might think they are neutral, or even positive on race issues, are first called on their unacknowledged privilege–they over react and take it all terribly personally. But make no mistake there is privilege resulting from Post Colonial fallout as a quick look at statistics by ethnicity, or trying to rent a flat under the name Tamati, will soon reveal.

   But the language–which was almost wiped out with assimilation and active discouragement up till the 70s, is an interesting matter. And there is a bit of diversity of opinion there. Some Māori are rapt that non Māori make an effort to learn Te Reo or even the 50 common words like “Kai” and “Whanau” that are used interchangeably with “food” and “family” by a number of people these days. Others see it as patronising. My take is that Euros are commonly multi lingual, and Māori are mostly forced to be bi lingual in this country, many Pākehā stay mono lingual, and would rather learn any language but Māori.

   Should pākehā use Māori words at all? seems to be where Ms Coulter’s approach will take us. I can understand Māori anger if stolen designs are printed on T-shirts and sold for profit etc. but the Restaurant name, a generic name–even if it was Kīngi–rather than kingi/kingy is getting into fucking ridiculous fight starting territory.

   • This stoush over the restaurant name seems spiteful, -in that restaurant owner herself owns a restaurant with a Spanish/Mexican name then decries another’s apparent appropriation? If it were ‘Kingi’ as a Maori name, it is itself an adaptation based or ‘appropriated’ on the English word ‘King’

     • Did you not read my post mince on toast they can use kinghy like in dinghy and thingy that is more in line with English pronunciation.

       • But Michelle you are not happy kingi being used (no capital or macron used)
         Now how about the amount of Maori words used for items that have just been made up as none existed….internet, electricity, pancake etc etc…no problems there I guess?
         And you can’t honestly say that the actual kingfish doesn’t have an actual Maori name, apart from kingfish, if so…then it ain’t Maori appropriation is it?

       • Or they could use Kingee or Kingie or Kingey or what ever spelling they choose for a made up word, maybe they went with an i because of the recognisable name Kingi and so is more familiar as being a noun.

     • Yes, Cantina is not from Aotearoa. Language is an ongoing scenario with as many opinions as there are people.

       There is an ongoing pinpricking of Dick Frizzell who is selling online, nice quality, licensed by the rights holders, prints of certain NZ artists work–Don Binney and Gordon Walters being two. Now, Walters decades ago used a repetitive koru like pattern on some works interpreted in his heyday as abstract art. Anyway it is Frizzell who is being targeted as the cultural appropriator!

       Some Māori rightly claim that as “first peoples”–subsequently colonised by superior British force, they deserve special consideration, and all my life have agreed with that in the major areas of life. I am against theft of culture for profit or used for deliberate insult, but the area of naming rights using generic words, and licensed art sales…are taking it to extremes.

       • Tiger Mountain: “…. Walters decades ago used a repetitive koru like pattern on some works interpreted in his heyday as abstract art.”

         A symbol very similar to that of the koru is a feature of Celtic art and design. I remember seeing it in many places when we were in Ireland. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen the same thing in artworks and the like from elsewhere in the world. Nobody should be surprised at that: ferns are ubiquitous in much of the temperate world.

         “Anyway it is Frizzell who is being targeted as the cultural appropriator!”

         Which is nonsense, of course, and evidence of ethnic chauvinism. Most unfortunate.

         “I am against theft of culture for profit or used for deliberate insult, but the area of naming rights using generic words, and licensed art sales…are taking it to extremes.”

         In my view, the notion of “theft of culture” could apply to every performance of works by European composers and playwrights, in which performers weren’t European, but were making money from the performance. Do we think of it that way? Of course we don’t: it would be – er- ethnic chauvinism. And besides that, just plain batty.

   • Tiger Mountain: “But the language–which was almost wiped out with assimilation and active discouragement up till the 70s….”

     In the 1970s, when I was taught te reo, there were still many native speakers. I was taught by one of them.

     I was around when the first kohanga reo were established, in an attempt to save the language. Since that time, it has fallen off a cliff, most especially with regard to native speakers.

     In truth, establishing preschools to revive language use was the wrong approach. There need to be native speakers, and to bring that about, Maori children need to be exposed exclusively to te reo from birth. Thus they hear only that language for the first few years of their lives, and it’s the first and only language they speak. Waiting to teach them until they’re preschoolers produces only bilingualism: not what te reo needs.

     We’ll know that revival of te reo has been successful when a cohort of Maori children arrives at school as 5 year olds, unable to speak English. That’s what’s needed.

     “Some Māori are rapt that non Māori make an effort to learn Te Reo…Others see it as patronising.”

     My experience in the 1970s was that my newly-acquired facility in te reo wasn’t received by Maori with unqualified enthusiasm. Even all those years ago, there were some who saw it as a form of pakeha appropriation. Yet I’d learned it because I was working in Maori communities, and there were, even then, some Maori who complained about pakeha inability to understand their language and customs, and to correctly pronounce names. You can’t win, sometimes…

     “….Euros are commonly multi lingual, and Māori are mostly forced to be bi lingual in this country, many Pākehā stay mono lingual, and would rather learn any language but Māori.”

     This is interesting. We have family in central and eastern Europe: they’re taught English in school, but many don’t become fluent and are effectively monolingual. In the Czech Republic, though, many young Czechs are fluent in English, which is their second language. But the second language of older Czechs is German, which reflects that country’s history as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Prague – not Vienna – was the original seat of government).

     Our experience in Europe is that, for obvious reasons, bilingualism is more prevalent in the border regions of European countries. The English tend to be monolingual because the UK is island territory. The same applies here and in Australia.

     Unfortunately, many Maori here aren’t even properly bilingual, not being either fluent in te reo, or native speakers. For better or for worse, their native language is English. As far as can be determined from statistics, the number of native te reo speakers here is vanishingly small. If there are any left at all. And if there are none, te reo is effectively a dead language, just like Latin.

     • Latin is not dead. Te Reo has not died either, in my opinion, but has been disseminated into the realms of the colloquial jargonised code, the bureaucratic govt. version (which is, I believe, not really intelligible to anyone in particular), the waiata and karakia lovingly practised and preserved nation and worldwide by schools, church and cultural groups, the tv version (do we still have radio?) and the still spoken, written and staunchly defended by those who work quietly at their craft. Language is a living thing, nil desperandum 🙂

       • Jane: “Latin is not dead. Te Reo has not died either….”

         Latin is most certainly a dead language. That’s the linguistic term for a language which has no native speakers (people who speak it as their first language). It’s not extinct, though, because scholars still use it to study the Classics.

         If there are no native speakers of te reo, it’s also dead. But it isn’t extinct, because some people speak it as their second language, and many others are studying it in a effort to improve their language competence.

         In the short to medium term, it’s unlikely to go extinct, because it’s also the language of rhetoric and ceremonial on the marae.

         It’s difficult to determine from the statistics whether there are any remaining native speakers of te reo. There may still be a few, in which case te reo isn’t dead. Yet. But it’s a very close-run thing.

5. Who’re the Gweens again?

   • I saw one driving a little Blue Pooh truck …it was a liddle blue gween fwairy

6. “De colon-ising” maybe.
   Funny post thanks, and you should consider voting ACT. Labour greens are full of this woke bullshit.

7. Who breathed life into The Greens?

   • Who breathed life into them?

     More than a billion $$$,$$$,$$$,$$$ in this years budget

     DOC Govt NZ 2020

     • When the Global economy is printing 400 billion a day or something, its not money that is the problem, at all. It’s like oh look, a billion dollars – job done, correct? NO! get back to work!

8. For once I agree with Mr Bradbury.
   Too much woke crap out and about.

9. “….the founder of Auckland restaurant Coco’s Cantina, Damaris Coulter, who accused him of appropriating the Māori word for King – kīngi.”

   Christ….where to begin? Somebody who’s nicked a Spanish name for her cafe (from which she presumably makes money) then complains about some other unfortunate person appropriating the word “kingi”. Does it not occur to Ms Coulter that her stance is inconsistent at best, just bonkers at worst?

   Here’s a thing: “kingi” isn’t a Maori word, in the sense that it was in use at the time of first European contact. Besides being a colloquial abbreviation for “kingfish”, it’s a transliteration of the English word “king”. People have done this since time immemorial: pinch the words they like out of other languages and adapt them for use in their own languages. It’s one of the ways in which language evolves, for heaven’s sake!

   Ms Coulter (Coulter in the Pullman sense? Or in the Ann Coulter sense?) really needs to abandon her humourlessness and to let this one go. Here’s a piece of advice for her: if you’re in a hole, stop digging.

10. Kingi is not a made up word Im right who is usually wrong my mums whanau are the Kingi whanau from the BOP. I see this issue has brought out the usual Maori bashers like im right and d estirer.

    • Michelle, who cannot spell correctly my nom de guerre: “Kingi is not a made up word…”

      Of course it’s not a made-up word. But it’s definitely a transliteration of the English word “king”. That word wasn’t in te reo before first European contact.

      The etymology of “king” shows that it’s derived from Germanic: note that the German word for “king” is “könig”. Old German is also the derivation of the word “queen”. The Maori transliteration of the latter word is “kuini”.

      After the Norman Conquest, the English language of the time borrowed many words from old French. Thus “royal” from “roi”. There are many other examples.

      As for te reo: note that the original word for “kingfish” had nothing to do with “kingi”. The name for the bird “kingfisher” is “kotare”. The kingfisher is not endemic, but an arrival from Australia. Though obviously it’s been here long enough to have acquired a Maori name.

      The same advice to you: if you’re in a hole, stop digging.

      • Pardon my intrusion, but I had understood that ‘queen’ had celtic roots – Cwen – or the Welsh Gwenhwyfar. Both seem closer than the French Reinne or the German Königin.

        • OBhave: “… I had understood that ‘queen’ had celtic roots – Cwen – or the Welsh Gwenhwyfar….”

          The etymology of the word “queen”: Old English cwēn, of Germanic origin; related to quean. The word “king” is also Germanic in origin (the German word is konig). These words derive from the Germanic roots of Old English.

          It’s entirely possible that the same word in Celtic languages has the same roots. The early Celts apparently migrated through what is now Germany, on their way north-west through Europe. Or so a knowledgeable relative who lives there told me. So they’d have interacted with Germanic tribes and borrowed words from them. Around Munich, the names of many small towns have the suffix -ing. Said knowledgeable relative remarked that this was a marker of the Celtic presence in that area, millennia ago.

    • my mums whanau are the Kingi whanau from the BOP.

      Michelle, You are right. My mother (and grandmother and great grandmother) are also from the BoP. My mum used to talk about the Kingis being around when she was a kid. One of them worked on my grandfather’s farm (Mum liked him a lot and thought of him as family too). They were already here in the time my “Greats” farm was getting going, so they’ve been around since at least the late 1800s.

      Don’t let anyone throw you off by their fancy semantics, their word games. Much of the English language we use today had its origin way further back than they’re suggesting. Can check it out here: Proto Indo European Language

11. Kheala: “…they’ve been around since at least the late 1800s.”

    However: the first European contact with NZ was in the 18th century. Whalers and sealers arrived here in the far south very early, and began intermarrying with Maori almost immediately. This history is well-known.

    The word “kingi” is definitely a transliteration of the English word “king”. So it wasn’t part of te reo before first contact. If you would see what early written Maori looks like, you could do worse than read the Treaty. I know enough te reo to be able to read it. There’s no mention of “kingi” in it, though the transliteration “kuini” is there, in reference to Queen Victoria. There is also the word “kawanatanga”, a transliteration of the English “governorship”. Maori used transliterations where the words for a thing or concept did not exist in te reo. Note also that NZ is referred to as “Nu Tirani”, not Aotearoa, which wasn’t used at that time.

    Transliterations often become part of a language; this is a common practice with languages everywhere.

    The owner of that café was being precious in castigating somebody for using a word which has become a colloquial abbreviation for “kingfish”. We’re all NZers together: attempting to corral off te reo from pakeha and other migrants, as it seems the complainant is attempting to do, is both futile and mean-spirited.

    Martyn is correct: it’s this sort of footling woke leftery which will cost the Greens come the election. Not that I would be sorry about that, of course. But it may also cost Labour some votes, if it is seen as being too closely involved.

    “Much of the English language we use today had its origin way further back than they’re suggesting.”

    Proto-Indo-European. This is also well-known, at least among linguists and those who’ve studied linguistics.

    But Maori is an Austronesian language. Its roots lie in Proto-Austronesian, thought to have originated in Taiwan. See this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Austronesian

    The geographical spread of Austronesian languages is an interesting picture. I recommend it to you, if you’re unfamiliar with that story. I think that it was Jared Diamond who referred to the “Polynesian speedboat” when writing about the Polynesian migration into the Pacific.

    Given that humans originated in Africa, and doubtless had acquired language before the first wave of outward migration, there’ll have been a common core language. But that was so deep in human history as to have left no discernible linguistic evidence.

    • May I ask if you’re an author? I’m guessing, probably. If not, you should be writing books, D’E.

      • Kerala: “May I ask if you’re an author?”

        Heh! I’m not. It’s just that I’m a bit of a language nerd: hence my learning of various languages other than my native language And I have a longstanding interest in linguistics, including the history of language development.

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