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Lyndon Hood - Ngati Pakeha, Wellington

Thursday, August 17, 2006

As silver linings go, it's not much, but it seems that Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu's work promoting Maoridom to the world has not ended with her death.

One rather odd legacy is what I presume is the first greenlighted headline on user-submitted quasi-news megasite Fark written in Maori. I think I can recall ASCII Binary, I've definitely seen morse code and L33T - they do like their customised novelty headlines - but I've never seen Maori.

Apparently it was composed with an online dictionary - I won't vouch for it's linguistic perfection, but I do find the whole idea touching:

Te Kuini o nga iwi Maori, Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu, ai te Mate

A lot of the comments are riffing on the way nobody can understand the headline, but my favorite is probably this one:
I wonder how long until I get an e-mail from one of her relatives or her bank manager about money she had in a secret bank account and how I could help get it out of New Zealand.


In the rest of the world, there's been a huge flow of tributes - Scoop's coverage is compiled here.