so ever since I saw this wonderful post, i’ve been wanting to make my own post explaining exactly how gideon’s name is transliterated into kiriona, because it’s kind of blowing my mind a little now that i’ve thought about it. keep in mind that i’m not a linguist nor do i speak Te Reo Māori. I’m just a person who has taken several linguistics classes and is interested in this kind of thing.
So the first thing to know is that not all languages have the same set of individual sounds. These individual sounds are called phonemes, and this is what creates accents. For example, Spanish has the phoneme (the flap, if you know IPA) that many people refer to as a “rolled r,” but English does not. So when English speakers try to pronounce that phoneme, they often replace it with the most similar sound they can produce, which might be the English “r” or “d” sound.
The second thing to know is that “transliteration is the process of converting texts from one script to another based on the phonetic similarity.” So transliteration is essentially the process of replacing sounds with their most similar counterparts in the target language.
Okay, enough background information. Let’s take a look at Te Reo Māori’s specific set of consonants:
so you’ll notice that Māori actually doesn’t have a “g” sound at all! but what it does have is a “k” sound. “k” and “g” are both velar stops; they are literally produced in the EXACT same way in the mouth. the ONLY difference is that “g” has vocal chord vibration, and “k” does not. this means that “k” is as close as you can possibly get to saying “g” in Māori, which explains how you get the switch from “g” in gideon to “k” in kiriona.
now let’s talk about the “i” sounds. I don’t want to get too technical here because vowels are confusing and this post is long enough already, but keep in mind that these sounds are actually not pronounced the same way, i don’t think. the “i” in gideon is like the the “i” in the word kid (for IPA knowers: “ɪ”). Māori does not have this sound, but it does have the “i” vowel sound being used in the English words bead or deed. the “long e” as they say. so that’s probably how the first"i" in kiriona is actually being pronounced, if i had to guess.
okay! let’s look at the next sound, namely the “d” and the “r.” looking at the chart again, you’ll notice that Māori doesn’t have the English “d” sound at all. but what it DOES have is this sound here: “ɾ.” this is referred to as a tap or flap, and it’s the same sound that the dd’s make in the English word “ladder.” it’s also used very frequently in Spanish in words like “pero,” where it is represented with the letter “r.” so that explains that switch; the “r” in kiriona is actually pronounced as a flap, which can sound similar to “d” for English speakers depending on the word. again, this flap sound represented by the letter “r” is probably the closest you could get to saying “d” in Māori.
next up, the “e” in gideon and the second “i” in kiriona. i think these are probably the same sound. they are both that “long e” sound as in bead or deed or meet that I mentioned before. so in kiriona, there’s two i’s, both representing the same sound. same sound, same letter! if only english spelling could be so consistent.
the o’s are not the same sound i don’t think, but this post is so long. just know that again, Māori does not have the sound that “o” is making in gideon. but they’re written with the same letter here so i’m not gonna get into it, sorry.
the n’s are the same! moving on
the last thing to know here is that not all languages have the same possible syllable structures. in English, it is possible for a syllable to end with a consonant. for example, the name “Bob” ends with a consonant. no problem, right? well, Māori has the syllable structure ©V(V(V)), meaning that a syllable literally cannot end in a consonant. it HAS to end in a vowel. so if we split the name gideon into syllables, it’s like this: gi.de.on. you can see that the last syllable ends with the consonant “n.” this is simply not possible in Maori, so the solution is to add another vowel onto the end, hence the “a” in kiriona. that way it can be syllabified as ki.ri.o.na, which ensures that none of the syllables end in a consonant.
so there you have it! kiriona is as close as you could possibly get to saying gideon according to the rules of Te Reo Māori.