Talk:New Zealand

Last?

The term last large landmass might be backed by some sources but it is open to interpretation of large. The Azores are pretty big. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 13:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

The Azores are (in total) a bit larger than Stewart Island, and smaller than Stewart and Chatham combined. Daveosaurus (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

I glad we agree. Can you suggest a better description than large land mass? Based on wikipedia I note the population of the Azores is reaching 240,000. A place must be pretty large to support such a population. Moving on, does Greenland count? And depending how we define settled there are lots of people living in Antarctica,some raisinv families there. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:55, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

My point was that the Azores are, in total, considerably smaller than either of the main islands of New Zealand. It's possible to fit the entire population of New Zealand onto an island smaller than Chatham (it's been done and the result called "Singapore"). The expression is sourced and is not controversial.

I wouldn't describe Antarctica as "settled". It doesn't have a native population - people working there are residents of somewhere else and are working there as scientific or support staff, the majority only for the Antarctic summer. Daveosaurus (talk) 09:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

A dictionary defines landmass as "a continent or other large body of land" which to me means big, but still open to interpretation of actual size. I would say NZ counts and the Azores probably not. However, based on that definition we can remove the word big as unnecessary -landmasses are big by definition. Argentina and Chile have put people in their Antarctic bases to have kids and live there permantly. It is all part of their respective sovereignty claims. A bit artificial but those places ars nevertheless permanent settlements to an extent. On relection, perhaps the sentence is best left as is but with the word large removed - landmass is enough. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 10:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

User:kahastok has commented here. I went there because I realised the Falklands might be codered a landmass and wanted further opinion, which is what I got. I am now more convinced thatlede sentence should be altered. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:05, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Government Box

I ask that under the right hand "Government" box that the House Speaker & Chief Justices be added under the Monarch, Governor General and Prime Minister. Foxyplus1 (talk) 01:13, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

New Zealand's monarch, not the UK's

"The British monarch remained New Zealand's head of state"? Doesn't New Zealand have its own monarch as head of state? GoodDay (talk) 01:40, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

I've deleted the sentence. New Zealand has its own monarch/head of state, separate for the UK's. GoodDay (talk) 01:45, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

New Zealan has it's own monarch which is now King Charles the Third, the King of the Realm of New Zealand. The King of New Zealand might be the King of the UK but they are separate people who happen to be the same person. 139.180.115.241 (talk) 09:24, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 September 2022

2601:1C2:4E01:25B0:90D1:F8DE:4E4C:279D (talk) 05:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

replace “Māori: Aotearoa” to “known as Aotearoa” for proper acknowledgment of Aotearoa as New Zealand’s proper name as known by the native peoples who live there, and not just a local translation.

I raised the same issue elsewhere with Las Malvinas being used as the Spanish translation of The Falkland Islands, which it is not. The consensus was to leave it be. I tend to agree with you that to say "also known as Aotearoa" is more accurate. In my view 'Aotearoa' is a Maori word that has now borderline been assimilated into English, meaning it is an English word when used in English, not a foreign word. That would support your idea of using "also known as". However, to follow that line would invite lots of edit wars. If I have to vote it is a marginal support. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:16, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't see the need for any change to the lead here. Aotearoa *is* the name for the country in the Māori-language, and so should continue to be noted as such in the lead sentence (and in the infobox), for consistency with the pages for other NZ place names. However, in the "Etymology" section (where the name "Aotearoa" is described further), it might be worth noting that it is sometimes also used for the name of the country in less formal English text.PatricKiwi (talk) 13:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:47, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Spoken languages

I think the language section is a bit confusing. At first it says "English is the predominant language in New Zealand, spoken by 95.4% of the population", followed by "Maori is spoken by 4.0% of the population". Makes sense at first, until the next paragraph, that is. "As recorded in the 2018 census, Samoan is the most widely spoken non-official language (2.2%), followed by "Northern Chinese" (including Mandarin, 2.0%), Hindi (1.5%), and French (1.2%)".

But if we go by the first two paragraphs, 95.4+4.0=99.4. That doesn't leave any room for the non-official languages (except for 0.1%). So something either doesn't add up there or it's badly written. Vistaus (talk) 10:26, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

This has come up before but it still isn't sorted out. There are a number of issues.

• 1/ 'Spoken' is a term open to wide interpretation: it can mean fluent mother tongue or able to say hello, goodbye and what's the time.
• 2/ Referring to the census is an attempt to overcome this problem but the census questions are equally ambiguous and what is worse they usually allow for more than one answer, hence a total above 100%.
• 3/ The census questions are rarely given on wikipedia.
• 4/ There is always a tendency for people to claim they can speak a minority language of a country if that language is at risk or is somehow 'trendy' to use. Just look at many example articles from around the world. This distorts the real situation.
• 5 / In many cases, minority languages have a degree of protection involving forced usage and promotion, which also distorts the figures. That can also lead to some degree of artificial weight being given to a language. Maori in NZ is one such case.
• 6/ Being official or not is not relevant to a statement of how many people speak a language.
• 7/ Due to the blunt nature of the infobox parameter there is usually no distinction made between an indigenous language and one spoken by immigrants, the second type usually being regarded as less important. Hence, Maori will be treated as more important than Korean, despite there being more Korean speakers in NZ, at a level of fluency at least.

In summary, I think the template needs to be better written to allow for less personal interpretation and better uniformity across related articles. However, failing that I think we could look at this again for the NZ article alone and try to reach consensus on how better to use the infobox. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 12:10, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

It's just slightly misleading. Many people speak multiple languages - the biggest overlap will be between English and another language - therefore the total will add up to more than 100%. I find it more interesting that 5% of NZers don't speak English!

I will try edit the paragraph to reflect the maths but I think as it's currently laid out it might just need a footnote or something. I've seen disclaimers on census data that mentions this but can't find it on the NZ or AU sites right now. TreeReader (talk) 19:11, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Dutch Renaming

At present the section reads: "Hendrik Brouwer proved that the South American land was a small island in 1643, and Dutch cartographers subsequently renamed Tasman's discovery Nova Zeelandia from Latin, after the Dutch province of Zeeland." It would be good to include the detail of specifically who chose the name, rather than 'cartographers'; ' Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company' as per the first link there, and also that this occurred in 1646, as per here. For a little further detail, and clarity. The 'subsequently' could give the impression that the renaming occurred at the same time as the first part 1643.219.88.68.195 (talk) 22:39, 1 November 2022 (UTC)