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The town of Whangamata is sited on the southeast coast of the Coromandel Peninsula in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located 20 kilometres north of Waihi, to the north of the western extremity of the Bay of Plenty. The second largest town on the peninsula (after Thames), it has a population of 4000.
Shibboleth: People aware of other place names of Maori origin might expect Whangamata to be pronounced in a similar way to such names as Waitemata and Matamata, where more stress is placed on the penultimate syllable than the final one, leaving the last 'a' as a schwa. These place names rhyme, roughly, with the English word matter. Whangamata goes against this rule, and the stress is placed firmly on the final 'a'. The ending thus rhymes (roughly) with the English word guitar.
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