August 01, 2008
THE New Zealand town of Whakatane has been censored in cyberspace because the pronunciation of the word is close to the f-word.
The censorship was uncovered when a visitor to the tourist town on the east coast of the North Island tried to connect to the local council's wireless service Freenet.
His internet searches for “Whakatane” were rejected, with the Freenet website offering the explanation that “the content is filtered so this service is for legitimate use”.
Whakatane District Council spokesman Barney Dzowa said the problem lay with the pronunciation of the town's name where the “wh” takes an “f” sound.
“The content filter is an American-based product, and it does a phonetic analysis of what has been typed in,” he said.
“Whakatane, to the system, sounds like an f-word.”
However, now that the problem has been discovered, the council has had the name added to a list of words capable of overriding the content filter.
AFP
On our trip to New Zealand we found that some of the place names did sound a bit funny when pronounced correctly. One such place was Whakapapa Ski Field. Pronounced correctly it is said F***apapa.
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