Yesterday, Lesley plucked up courage and took control of the steering wheel for a time and in exchange she has condescended to my tinkering on the keyboard to make a small contribution to the blog.

As language is a thing close to our hearts, I thought it might be relevant at this stage to give a quick run down of things that have struck us on our travels. There seems no better place to start than the Maori language, which after many years of decline is beginning to undergo a renaissance. There are TV stations in Maori, some English place names are now known by their Maori name and the language is now taught in schools throughout New Zealand. Will we see a situation arising as with Welsh and Catalan, I wonder?

 Early European  settlers were the first to transcribe the language and did so with just fifteen letters of the English alphabet (the five vowels and ten consonants). This throws up some interesting combinations, none more so than the “wh” in Maori which is pronounced as an English “f”. Therefore place names such as Whakatane and Whangaroa are pronounced Fokatane and Fangaroa, respectively (whucking whunny iwh you ask me!).

Place names in Maori tell their own story, eg Aotearoa (Maori name for NZ, meaning Land of the Long White Cloud) Akaroa (long harbour), Whakatane (to act as a man) and the one that worries the most, Urewere (burnt penis). I hope we are talking sun damage and not barbecues!

As for the modern Kiwis, that is another story. We should have known when we first met our Auckland friends in Faversham and Jen (pronounced Jin) strode into a local pub and demanded “a table for sex” that we are divided by a language in common. Basically, an English “i” is pronounced as a Kiwi “e” and viceversa. So, I didn’t get too alarmed when Phil (pronounced Phel) announced he was thinking of putting a dick in his garden.. Then again, sometimes they seem to compress many vowels entirely, so you get fshnchups (fish and chips) as a takeaway, or you cook your own having first visited a whtfshop (wet fish shop).

If you are of a nervous disposition, or if your name is Ben, Sam or Emily, please avert your gaze now!  Lesley and I have just had some hokey pokey, (but don’t get too concerned as it’s only Crunchie type honeycomb)!

Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a Spaniard!