There seems to be alot of people taking the higher ground "why is this important" etc etc. Fine, lets take the higher ground... fix the mistake! This is not about being politically correct, its just about being correct. Given that the omission of the "h" is a spelling mistake (we all can agree on that), why go on with it once it has been pointed out as a mistake? Instead, M Laws quotes the "Mana" of W(h)anganui, a further bastardisation of Te Reo in this context. Regardless of language, public spelling mistakes have no "Mana".

The opportunity to be stubborn re this issue is beginning to polarize the community. Leaders should be above this stubbornness. The result is endangering Mr Law's property & family and also devaluing W(h)anganui as a community. The easiest way to appease the discontent is to give them what they want whilst maintaining integrity. Winston Peters apprentice (yes, Mr Laws) should know that Winston Peterisms are outdated. Be pragmatic for the good of your family & community, realise that when an issue like this is bought up, it never goes away with inertia. Politically spin it how you want to maintain your pride but for your family & community sake, you are choosing to be bullied, give over, or is it too late for you?

I think central government will step in somehow & make a martyr of you anyway.

Democracy doesn't safeguard idiots nor does it bow to moral or cultural elitism. Rangi.

A perfect example of the petty 'going round in circles' nature of race relations in NZ. Being in London (along with pretty much all the young people I grew up with in NZ), just gives a little perspective. Grow up NZ. Its been Wanganui for years, there was no spelling of it before that, move on. Have people got nothing better to do in NZ? oh, thats right, they dont, thats why we're all here.

We as a scoiety should be ensuring that GEN Y can spell full stop, not worrying about changing the names of towns, this will confuse them even more.

Morons whoever did this.

Keeping the name as it is, is logical. It saves money on changing all the signs around the district to include an extra h.

Like I said before, the ancestors should have got it right when the city was founded over a century ago.

Interesting that now the 'h' issue has been brought up the attacks and vandalism has started. It's just petty idiots trying to stir up problems and screw with the system. If these vandals really cared and didn't just want to get in the news they would have been doing this kind of thing for years to make their point, purely attention seekers pretending they represent the views of the many.

Fot is all this nonsense about, and fy worry about a langauge that was never written down in the first place. Mari is not spoken anyfair else in the world.. Either way its certainly not English that most of the English speaking population of the world uses each day. Thank God my name is not Mr. Fite..

I would have thought the W(h)anganui Maori would have much greater issues to worry about (ie unemployment, violence, drugs). Smashing a defenseless kids window or vandalising a sign is not going to help anyone instead it will turn the public further against you.

Get a life.

If Mikil Lawz does not think spelling is the perogative of the people who provide a name, perhaps he can tell us wot we should and shouldn't do. However, he is a Pakeha (yes he is!) hoo should know better than to tamper with wot is not his.

Maori is always written in a Roman script. Two digraphs are used, "ng" represents a velar nasal, and "wh" which is nowadays mostly pronounced like an English /f/. Vowel length in Maori is phonemic, i.e., vowels are either pronounced short or long. Early writing in Maori did not distinguish vowel length. Some (such as the late Bruce Biggs) advocated that the double vowel orthography be used to distinguish vowel length. The Maori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri) prefer that a macron be used to designate a long vowel. Macron use is now wide spread in modern Maori writings.

Computer fonts with macrons (for both PCs and Macs) are widely used in New Zealand and readily available on the Internet. Unicode is becoming the preferred option for displaying macrons on web \ sites with Maori language text.

This article is worthless without pictures.