Felix Desmarais: Pronunciation of 'helicopter' has me in spin

I tried, among my colleagues, to revise the pronunciation of helicopter. My thesis is that it should be helico-ter. It never took off, writes Felix Desmarais. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Did you know the word helicopter is made up of two words?

Ok, you probably knew that one. But did you know it's not heli and copter?

I know. This is hard to take.

It's not helic and opter either, sorry.

It's helico and pter.

Yep. I'll give you a minute while your entire world crashes down around you.

It's understandable. I needed a cup of tea and a lie down for a whole week for that one. My coffee table almost crumbled under the weight of the teapot.

They're both Greek words - helico means a spiral (helix), or the sun, and pter comes from pteron, meaning wing, in the same vein as pterodactyl.

Upon learning this, I tried, among my colleagues, to revise the pronunciation of helicopter. My thesis is that it should be helico-ter. It never took off.

English, the real empire where the sun has never set, has consumed everything in its path. It's barely its own language anymore - and this goes back long before colonialism.

It's taken bits and pieces from almost every other language in the world and made them its own. Even the phrase to explain how ubiquitous English is has been lifted from another - lingua franca.

This borrowing makes English beautiful and ugly all at the same time, a staggering Frankenstein's monster of rambling verbiage.

I lean on the side of beauty - I've had a love affair with English since I got a CD-ROM of Encyclopaedia Britannica in a cereal box when I was 9.

Its dictionary had a function where I could search the etymology of words, and I soon learned hundreds of Latin, Nordic or Germanic root words which explained the English ones.

It meant I would later read a word I didn't know, but I would extract its meaning from knowing its components. It was an extraordinary gift.

With that in mind, I really should have known how helicopter was made up, but even insufferable nerds who spend hours reading dictionaries have their shortcomings.

I may have been plunged into a sea of European words when I was a kid, but it wasn't so when it came to the indigenous language of New Zealand.

I certainly gleaned more than my parents' generation - I have a fond memory of teaching Mum and Dad E Ihowā Atua (the national anthem) around 1999.

It probably wasn't a coincidence it was around the same time Dame Hinewehi Mohi bravely sang it at the 1999 Rugby World Cup opener.

I remember feeling disappointed and embarrassed at rugby games in the early 2000s when the te reo version was sung in a stadium - it would be so quiet, then booming in the English version.

That doesn't happen so much anymore, as people like me who learned it in school populate those stadium seats. We sing both with such pride now. It adds to our pride. We are all united in being collectively unable to hit the notes, in either language. It's a beautiful thing.

Learning another language - not necessarily to fluency, even just bits of it - has in my experience greatly enhanced my understanding, command and appreciation for my mother tongue, as well as the language I was learning.

Language reaches across barriers and cultures to our mutual humanity. The capacity for language, after all, is what differentiates us from other animals.

As an adult, I've had the privilege of learning a little te reo Māori. What I've come to know, which I could not have truly understood without learning some, is the true beauty of te reo Māori.

It is, to me, a poet's language. It's not just the words, but the way it is said, often with true brilliance, that makes te reo Māori a bona fide treasure.

How stunningly beautiful is the greeting "tēnā koe"? It means, literally, there you are. I see you, I acknowledge you.

It makes me proud to be a Pākehā, it makes me proud to be a New Zealander, that we can share this land and its treasures.

More than celebrating, that's worth protecting. Every week of the year.

- September 14 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the Māori Language Petition. Māori language week - te wiki o te reo Māori is from September 12-18.

Felix Desmarais is a journalist and mostly-former stand-up comedian who sold out very cheaply.