Mike Hill 🇳🇿 :
I hate to burst bubbles here, because it is a beautiful word. But these "experts" choose kaitiakitanga from a list of just 223 words, from just 75 (75, not OVER 75) different languages....from all around the world? ....🤔....
So 223 words means literally less than 3 words per language (2.97), from 75 out of 7,164 different living languages in the world. Each with roughly 15,000 - 100,000+ words within their dictionaries. (English - 171,476, Korean - 1,100,373, Te Reo - ~ 13-18,000).
Which means literally over 99.999% of words IN THE WORLD, were excluded from consideration for the most beautiful word IN THE WORLD "competition".
....."experts" you say???.....🤔......
......spoiler.....it was a "competition" designed and run in-house by the people at the language app Babbel, as a curated promotional campaign rather than a genuine extensive search or academic study.
Well done kaitiakitanga though I suppose.....go Aotearoa!!?? 🎉
2026-07-18 12:07:14