Quote:
Originally Posted by stuartjmz
...The use of the macron is not less than 20 years old, and even before that existed as a doubled spelling of the vowels. Since some variant of macronisation has been a widespread feature of Māori orthography for at least half of my half-century, with some attestations going back further still, I'm loathe to call it "an entirely new concept"
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Your "at least half of my half-century", so the last 25 years, is all recent in historic linguistic terms.
It is difficult to disagree with the fact that it has become recently (in the historic sense) fashionable to macronise (new word that, I think) "a"s, and it is a poor observer who does not see that has accelerated recently (in historic terms). I will only spend my time giving two examples demonstrating macronless (another new word, I think) text in the past and transition to fashionable use.
The first is by referring to Te Rangi Hiroa's well respected work (around 550 pages)
The Coming of the Maori published in 1949, new edition 1950. You will have to go a long way to find a macron on anything anywhere in that book, in fact it may be that there are none at all.
The second is H. W. William's
Dictionary of the Maori Language (first published in 1844) which at the sixth edition (1957) the word "Maori" is not macronised as you write it, but in the seventh edition (1971) it is.
There are many words that have become much more recently macronised, for example the place name "Kapiti", whereas I think the word "kapiti" itself has yet to transition to having one - but I suspect it likely soon will, and maybe has already done so in the hands of fashionable writers.
I'll leave it at that as we are drifting away from the thread topic.