Maori language
Encyclopedia
Māori or te reo Māori commonly te reo ("the language"), is the language of the indigenous
population of New Zealand
, the Māori. It has the status of an official language
in New Zealand. Linguists classify it within the Eastern Polynesian languages
as being closely related to Cook Islands Māori
, Tuamotuan
and Tahitian
; somewhat less closely to Hawaiian
and Marquesan
; and more distantly to the languages of Western Polynesia, including Samoan
, Tokelauan
, Niuean
and Tongan
. According to the Maori Language Commission, the number of fluent adult speakers fell to about 10,000 in 1995.
– Māori, English
and New Zealand Sign Language. Māori gained this status with the passing of the Māori Language Act
in 1987. Most government departments and agencies have bilingual names; for example, the Department of Internal Affairs
Te Tari Taiwhenua, and places such as local government offices and public libraries display bilingual signs and use bilingual stationery. The New Zealand Post
recognises Māori place-names in postal addresses
. Dealings with government agencies may be conducted in Māori, but in practice, this almost always requires interpreter
s, restricting its everyday use to the limited geographical areas of high Māori fluency, and to more formal occasions, such as during public consultation
.
An interpreter is on hand at sessions of Parliament, in case a Member wishes to speak in Māori. In 2009, Opposition parties held a filibuster
against a local government bill, and those who could recorded their voice votes in Māori, all faithfully interpreted.
A 1994 ruling by the Privy Council
in the United Kingdom held the New Zealand Government responsible under the Treaty of Waitangi
(1840) for the preservation of the language. Accordingly, since March 2004, the state has funded Māori Television
, broadcast partly in Māori. On 28 March 2008, Māori Television launched its second channel, Te Reo
, broadcast entirely in the Māori language, with no advertising or subtitles.
In 2008, Land Information New Zealand
published the first list of official place names with macrons, which indicate long vowels. Previous place name lists were derived from systems (usually mapping and GIS systems) that could not handle macrons.
According to legend, Māori came to New Zealand from the mythical Hawaiki
. Current anthropological thinking places their origin in tropical eastern Polynesia
, mostly likely from the Southern Cook or Society Islands region, and that they arrived by deliberate voyages in seagoing canoe
s – possibly double-hulled and probably sail-rigged. These settlers probably arrived by about AD 1280 (see Māori origins). Their language and its dialects developed in isolation until the 19th century.
Since about 1800, the Māori language has had a tumultuous history. It started this period as the predominant language of New Zealand. In the 1860s, it became a minority language
in the shadow of the English
spoken by many settlers, missionaries, gold seekers, and traders. In the late 19th century, the colonial governments of New Zealand and its provinces introduced an English-style school system for all New Zealanders, and from the 1880s the authorities forbade the use of Māori in schools – see Native Schools
). Increasing numbers of Māori people learned English.
Until World War II
(1939–1945), most Māori people spoke Māori as their first language. Worship took place in Māori; it functioned as the language of Māori homes; Māori politicians conducted political meetings in Māori; and some literature and many newspapers appeared in Māori.
As late as the 1930s, some Māori parliamentarians suffered disadvantage because Parliament's proceedings took place in English. From this period, the number of speakers of Māori began to decline rapidly. By the 1980s, fewer than 20% of Māori spoke the language well enough to be classed as native speakers. Even many of those people no longer spoke Māori in the home. As a result, many Māori children failed to learn their ancestral language, and generations of non-Māori-speaking Māori emerged.
By the 1980s, Māori leader
s began to recognize the dangers of the loss of their language, and initiated Māori-language recovery-programs such as the Kōhanga Reo
movement, which from 1982 immersed infants in Māori from infancy to school age. There followed in 1985 the founding of the first Kura Kaupapa Māori
(Years 1 to 8 Māori-medium education programme) and later the first Wharekura (Years 9 to 13 Māori-medium education programme). Although "there was a true revival of te reo in the 1980s and early to-mid-1990s .... spurred on by the realisation of how few speakers were left, and by the relative abundance of older fluent speakers in both urban neighbourhoods and rural communities", the language has been in a "renewed decline" since (p. 439). The decline is believed "to have several underlying causes". These include:
Based on the principles of partnership, Māori-speaking government, general revitalisation and dialectal protective policy,and adequate resourcing, the Waitangi Tribunal has recommended "four fundamental changes":
Comparative linguist
s classify Māori as a Polynesian language
; specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language
belonging to the Tahitic
subgroup, which includes Rarotongan, spoken in the southern Cook Islands
, and Tahitian
, spoken in Tahiti
and the Society Islands
. Other major Eastern Polynesian languages include Hawaiian
, Marquesan
(languages in the Marquesic
subgroup), and the Rapa Nui language
of Easter Island
.
While the preceding are all distinct languages, they remain similar enough that Tupaia
, a Tahitian travelling with Captain James Cook
in 1769–1770, communicated effectively with Māori. Speakers of modern Māori generally report that they find the languages of the Cook Islands
, including Rarotongan, the easiest other Polynesian languages to understand and converse in. See also Austronesian languages
.
According to the 2006 census, 131,613 Māori (23.7%) "could [at least] hold a conversation about everyday things in te reo Māori". In the same census, Māori speakers were 4.2% of the New Zealand population.
The level of competence of self-professed Māori speakers varies from minimal to total. Statistics have not been gathered for the prevalence of different levels of competence. Only a minority of self-professed speakers use Māori as their main language in the home. The rest use only a few words or phrases (passive
bilingualism).
Māori is a community language in some predominantly-Māori settlements in the Northland, Urewera
and East Cape
areas. Kohanga reo
Māori-immersion kindergartens throughout New Zealand use Māori exclusively. Increasing numbers of Māori raise their children bilingually
Urbanisation after the Second World War led to widespread language shift from Māori predominance (with Māori the primary language of the rural whānau
) to English predominance (English serving as the primary language in the Pākehā
cities). Therefore Māori-speakers almost always communicate bilingually, with New Zealand English
as either their first or second language.
The percentage prevalence of the Māori language in the Māori diaspora is far lower than in New Zealand. Census data from Australia
show it as the home language of 5,504 people in 2001, or 7.5% of the Māori community in Australia. This represents an increase of 32.5% since 1996.
Attempts to write Māori words using the Roman alphabet began with Captain James Cook and other early explorers, with varying degrees of success. Consonants seem to have caused the most difficulty, but medial and final vowels are often missing in early sources. Anne Salmond records aghee for aki (In the year 1773, from the North Island East Coast, p. 98), Toogee and E tanga roak for Tuki and Tangaroa (1793, Northland, p216), Kokramea, Kakramea for Kakaramea (1801, Hauraki, p261), toges for toki(s), Wannugu for Uenuku and gumera for kumara (1801, Hauraki, p261, p266, p269), Weygate for Waikato (1801, Hauraki, p277), Bunga Bunga for pungapunga, tubua for tupua and gure for kurī (1801, Hauraki, p279), as well as Tabooha for Te Puhi (1823, Northern Northland, p385).
From 1814, missionaries tried to define the sounds of the language. William Kendall published a book in 1815 entitled He Korao no New Zealand, which in modern orthography and usage would be He Kōrero nō Aotearoa. Professor Samuel Lee, working with chief Hongi Hika
and Hongi's junior relative Waikato at Cambridge University
, established a definitive orthography based on Northern usage in 1820. Professor Lee's orthography continues in use, with only two major changes: the addition of wh to distinguish the bilabial voiceless fricative phoneme
from the labio-velar phoneme /w/; and the consistent marking of long vowels. The macron
has become the generally accepted device for marking long vowels (hāngi), but double vowel letters have also been used (haangi).
The Māori embraced literacy enthusiastically, and missionaries reported in the 1820s that Māori all over the country taught each other to read and write, using sometimes quite innovative materials in the absence of paper, such as leaves and charcoal, carved wood, and hides.
Māori devised ways to mark vowel-length, sporadically at first. Occasional and inconsistent vowel-length markings occur in 19th-century manuscripts and newspapers written by Māori, including macron-like diacritic
s and the doubling of letters. Māori writer Hare Hongi (Henry Stowell) uses macrons in his Maori-English Tutor and Vade Mecum of 1911, as does Sir Apirana Ngata
, inconsistently, in his Maori Grammar and Conversation (7th printing 1953). Once the Māori language started to be taught in universities in the 1960s, vowel-length marking was made systematic. At Auckland University, Professor Bruce Biggs
(of Ngāti Maniapoto
descent) promoted the use of double vowels (thus Maaori), and this became the standard at Auckland until Biggs died in 2000. The Māori Language Commission
, set up by Māori Language Act 1987 to act as the authority for Māori spelling and orthography, favours the use of macrons, which are now the established means of indicating long vowels.
Vowel length is phonemic; but four of the five long vowels occur in only a handful of word roots, the exception being /ā/. As noted above, it has recently become standard in Māori spelling to indicate a long vowel by a macron.
As in many other Polynesian languages, there are no true diphthongs in Māori (when two vowels are adjacent, each belongs to a different syllable), and all or nearly all sequences of nonidentical vowels are possible. All sequences of nonidentical short vowels occur and are phonemically distinct.
The following table shows the five vowel phonemes and the allophones for some of them according to Bauer 1997. Some of these phonemes occupy large spaces in the anatomical vowel triangle (actually a trapezoid) of tongue positions. For example, /u/ is sometimes realised as IPA [ʉ].
Diphthong
s are /ae, ai, ao, au, oi, oe, ou/.
have the same pronunciation as they do in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For those that do not, the IPA phonetic transcription
is included, enclosed in square brackets per IPA convention. Māori stops /p, t, k/ are nonaspirated, unlike in English. Māori /ɾ/ is a tap
, similar to the r in "very" in many dialects of England (and slightly less similar to the t in the American English
pronunciation of "city" or "letter").
The pronunciation of is extremely variable, but its most common pronunciation (its canonical allophone) is the labiodental fricative
, IPA [f] found in English
. Another allophone is the bilabial fricative, IPA [ɸ], which is usually supposed to be the sole pre-European pronunciation, although in fact linguists are not sure of the truth of this supposition.
Because English stops /p, t, k/ primarily have aspiration, speakers of English often hear the Māori nonaspirated stops as English /b, d, g/. English speakers also tend to hear Māori /r/ as English /l/. These ways of hearing have given rise to place-name spellings which are incorrect in Maori, like Tolaga Bay
in the North Island and Otago
and Waihola
in the South Island.
s in Māori have one of the following forms: V, VV, CV, CVV. This set of four can be summarized by the notation, (C)V(V), in which the segments in parentheses may or may not be present. A syllable cannot begin with two consonant sounds (the digraphs
ng and wh represent single consonant sounds), and cannot end in a consonant, although some speakers may occasionally devoice a final vowel. All possible CV combinations are grammatical, though wo, who, wu, and whu occur only in a few loanwords from English such as wuru, "wool" and whutuporo, "football".
As in many other Polynesian languages, e.g., Hawaiian, the rendering of loanwords from English includes representing every English consonant of the loanword (using the native consonant inventory; English has 24 consonants to 10 for Māori) and breaking up consonant clusters. For example, "Presbyterian" has been borrowed as Perehipeteriana; no consonant position in the loanword has been deleted, but /s/ and /b/ have been replaced with /h/ and /p/, respectively.)
Stress is typically within the last four syllables of a word. It falls preferentially on the first long vowel, on the first diphthong if there is no long vowel, and on the first syllable otherwise.
Within these broad divisions regional variations occur, and individual regions show tribal variations. The major differences occur in the pronunciation of words, variation of vocabulary, and idiom. A fluent speaker of Māori has no problem understanding other dialects.
There is no significant variation in grammar between dialects. Vocabulary and pronunciation vary to a greater extent, but this does not pose barriers to communication.
and Taranaki regions, the phoneme /h/ is a glottal stop
and the phoneme /wh/ is [ʔw]. In Tūhoe and the Eastern Bay of Plenty (northeastern North Island) ng has merged with n. In parts of the Far North, wh has merged with w.
. Now its sole official name is Aoraki/Mount Cook
, which favors the local dialect form. Likewise, Dunedin
's main research library, the Hocken Library
, has the name Te Uare Taoka o Hākena rather than northern Te Whare Taonga o Hākena. Goodall & Griffiths say there is also a voicing of k to g – this is why the region of Otago
(southern dialect) and the settlement it is named after – Otakou
(standard Māori) – vary in spelling (the pronunciation of the latter having changed over time to accommodate the northern spelling).
The standard Māori r is also found occasionally changed to an l in these southern dialects and the wh to w. These changes are most commonly found in place names, such as Lake Waihola
and the nearby coastal settlement of Wangaloa (which would, in standard Māori, be rendered Whangaroa), and Little Akaloa, on Banks Peninsula
. M. Goodall & Griffiths claim that final vowels are given a centralised pronunciation as schwa
or that they are elided
, resulting in such seemingly-bastardised place names as The Kilmog
, which in standard Māori would have been rendered Kirimoko, but which in southern dialect would have been pronounced very much as the current name suggests. This same elision is found in numerous other southern placenames, such as the two small settlements called The Kaik, near Palmerston
and Akaroa
, and the early spelling of Lake Wakatipu
as Wagadib. In standard Māori, Wakatipu would have been rendered Whakatipua, showing further the elision of a final vowel.
Statives serve as bases usable as verbs but not available for passive use, such as ora, alive, tika, correct. Grammars generally refer to them as "stative verbs". When used in sentences, statives require different syntax than other verb-like bases.
Locative bases can follow the locative particle ki (to, towards) directly, such as runga, above, waho, outside, and placenames (ki Tamaki, to Auckland).
Personal bases take the personal article a after ki, such as names of people (ki a Hohepa, to Joseph), personified houses, personal pronouns, wai? who? and Mea, so-and-so.
Verbal particles indicate aspectual properties of the verb they relate to. They include ka (inceptive), i (past), kua(perfect), kia (desiderative), me (prescriptive), e (non-past), kei (warning, “lest”), ina or ana (punctative-conditional, "if and when"), and e … ana (imperfect).
Pronouns have singular, dual and plural number. Different first-person forms in the dual and in the plural express groups either inclusive or exclusive of the listener.
Locative particles refer to position in time and/or space, and include ki (towards), kei (at), i (past position), and hei (future position).
Possessives fall into one of two classes marked by a and o, depending on the dominant versus subordinate relationship between possessor and possessed, so ngā tamariki a te matua, the children of the parent, but te matua o ngā tamariki, the parent of the children.
Definitives include the articles te (singular) and ngā (plural) and the possessives tā and tō. These also combine with the pronouns. Demonstratives have a deictic function, and include tēnei, this (near me), tēnā, that (near you), tērā, that (far from us both), and taua, the aforementioned. Other definitives include tēhea? (which?), and tētahi, (a certain).Definitives that begin with t form the plural by dropping the t: tēnei (this), ēnei (these).
for pronouns and possessives: singular, dual
and plural. For example: ia (he/she), rāua (they two), rātou (they, three or more). The dual and plural suffixes are modern reflexes of historical words rua and toru. Māori pronouns and possessives further distinguish exclusive "we" from inclusive "we", second and third. It has the plural pronouns: mātou (we, exc), tātou (we, inc), koutou (you), rātou (they). The language features the dual pronouns: māua (we two, exc), tāua (we two, inc), kōrua (you two), rāua (they two). The difference between exclusive and inclusive
lies in the treatment of the person addressed. Mātou refers to the speaker and others but not the person or persons spoken to (i.e., "I and some others, but not you"), while tātou refers to the speaker, the person or persons spoken to, and everyone else (i.e., "you and I and others"). Examples:
s.
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
population of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, the Māori. It has the status of an official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
in New Zealand. Linguists classify it within the Eastern Polynesian languages
Eastern Polynesian languages
The dozen Eastern Polynesian languages are found on Pacific Islands from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the southwest, to Easter Island in the southeast...
as being closely related to Cook Islands Māori
Cook Islands Maori
The Cook Islands Māori language, also called Māori Kūki 'Āirani or Rarotongan, is the official language of the Cook Islands. Most Cook Islanders also call it Te reo Ipukarea, literally "the language of the Ancestral Homeland"....
, Tuamotuan
Tuamotuan language
The Tuamotuan language or Paumotuan is a Tahitic language spoken by about 6700 people in the Tuamotu Islands with an additional 2000 speakers in Tahiti...
and Tahitian
Tahitian language
Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages...
; somewhat less closely to Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
and Marquesan
Marquesan language
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines....
; and more distantly to the languages of Western Polynesia, including Samoan
Samoan language
Samoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
, Tokelauan
Tokelauan language
Tokelauan is a Polynesian language closely related to Tuvaluan.-Speakers:It is spoken by about 1,500 people on the atolls of Tokelau, and by the few inhabitants of Swains Island in neighbouring American Samoa. It is a member of the Samoic family of Polynesian languages. It is, alongside English,...
, Niuean
Niuean language
The Niuean language or Niue language is a Polynesian language, belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages. It is most closely related to Tongan and slightly more distantly to other Polynesian languages such as Māori, Sāmoan, and Hawaiian...
and Tongan
Tongan language
Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 200,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO language.-Related languages:...
. According to the Maori Language Commission, the number of fluent adult speakers fell to about 10,000 in 1995.
Official status
New Zealand has three official languagesLanguage policy
Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
– Māori, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and New Zealand Sign Language. Māori gained this status with the passing of the Māori Language Act
Maori Language Act
The Māori Language Act 1987 was a piece of legislation passed by the New Zealand Parliament. It gave Te Reo Māori official language status, and gave speakers a right to use it in legal settings such as in court...
in 1987. Most government departments and agencies have bilingual names; for example, the Department of Internal Affairs
Department of Internal Affairs (New Zealand)
The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs is a state sector organisation whose roles include the issue of passports; administering citizenship grant applications, and lottery grant applications; enforcement of censorship and gambling law; registration of births, deaths, marriages and civil...
Te Tari Taiwhenua, and places such as local government offices and public libraries display bilingual signs and use bilingual stationery. The New Zealand Post
New Zealand Post
New Zealand Post, commonly referred by its acronym, NZPost is a State owned enterprise responsible for providing postal service in New Zealand.-History:...
recognises Māori place-names in postal addresses
New Zealand postal addresses
In June 2006, New Zealand introduced a new postcode system, which, unlike the previous system, applies to all items of mail, from June 2008.New Zealand Post did not require individual items of mail to include the post code in the address, as optical character recognition enabled automated sorting...
. Dealings with government agencies may be conducted in Māori, but in practice, this almost always requires interpreter
Interpreting
Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages...
s, restricting its everyday use to the limited geographical areas of high Māori fluency, and to more formal occasions, such as during public consultation
Public consultation
Public consultation, or simply consultation, is a regulatory process by which the public's input on matters affecting them is sought. Its main goals are in improving the efficiency, transparency and public involvement in large-scale projects or laws and policies...
.
An interpreter is on hand at sessions of Parliament, in case a Member wishes to speak in Māori. In 2009, Opposition parties held a filibuster
Filibuster
A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is the right of an individual to extend debate, allowing a lone member to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a given proposal...
against a local government bill, and those who could recorded their voice votes in Māori, all faithfully interpreted.
A 1994 ruling by the Privy Council
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
in the United Kingdom held the New Zealand Government responsible under the Treaty of Waitangi
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand....
(1840) for the preservation of the language. Accordingly, since March 2004, the state has funded Māori Television
Maori Television
Māori Television is a New Zealand TV station broadcasting programmes that make a significant contribution to the revitalisation of the Māori language and culture . Funded by the New Zealand Government, the station started broadcasting on 28 March 2004 from a base in Newmarket.Te Reo is the...
, broadcast partly in Māori. On 28 March 2008, Māori Television launched its second channel, Te Reo
Te Reo (TV)
Te Reo is a New Zealand TV station broadcasting programmes exclusively in the Māori language with no advertising or subtitles. It also broadcasts special tribal programming and offers particular focus on new programming for the fluent audience....
, broadcast entirely in the Māori language, with no advertising or subtitles.
In 2008, Land Information New Zealand
Land Information New Zealand
Land Information New Zealand is a New Zealand government agency. The current Chief Executive is Colin MacDonald and the current Minister of Land Information is Maurice Williamson.- Nature and scope of functions :...
published the first list of official place names with macrons, which indicate long vowels. Previous place name lists were derived from systems (usually mapping and GIS systems) that could not handle macrons.
History
Hawaiki
In Māori mythology, Hawaiki is the homeland of the Māori, the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand...
. Current anthropological thinking places their origin in tropical eastern Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
, mostly likely from the Southern Cook or Society Islands region, and that they arrived by deliberate voyages in seagoing canoe
Waka (canoe)
Waka are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes used for fishing and river travel, to large decorated war canoes up to long...
s – possibly double-hulled and probably sail-rigged. These settlers probably arrived by about AD 1280 (see Māori origins). Their language and its dialects developed in isolation until the 19th century.
Since about 1800, the Māori language has had a tumultuous history. It started this period as the predominant language of New Zealand. In the 1860s, it became a minority language
Minority language
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...
in the shadow of the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
spoken by many settlers, missionaries, gold seekers, and traders. In the late 19th century, the colonial governments of New Zealand and its provinces introduced an English-style school system for all New Zealanders, and from the 1880s the authorities forbade the use of Māori in schools – see Native Schools
Native schools
In New Zealand, Native Schools were established to provide education for the Māori.Until the 1860s, the government subsidised church schools for the Maori. Early missionary schools were often conducted in the Māori language, which was the predominant language throughout the early part of the 19th...
). Increasing numbers of Māori people learned English.
Until World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(1939–1945), most Māori people spoke Māori as their first language. Worship took place in Māori; it functioned as the language of Māori homes; Māori politicians conducted political meetings in Māori; and some literature and many newspapers appeared in Māori.
As late as the 1930s, some Māori parliamentarians suffered disadvantage because Parliament's proceedings took place in English. From this period, the number of speakers of Māori began to decline rapidly. By the 1980s, fewer than 20% of Māori spoke the language well enough to be classed as native speakers. Even many of those people no longer spoke Māori in the home. As a result, many Māori children failed to learn their ancestral language, and generations of non-Māori-speaking Māori emerged.
By the 1980s, Māori leader
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
s began to recognize the dangers of the loss of their language, and initiated Māori-language recovery-programs such as the Kōhanga Reo
Kohanga reo
The Māori language revival is a movement to promote, reinforce and strengthen the speaking of the Māori language. Primarily in New Zealand, but also in centres with large numbers of New Zealand migrants , the movement aims to increase the use of Māori in the home, in education, government and...
movement, which from 1982 immersed infants in Māori from infancy to school age. There followed in 1985 the founding of the first Kura Kaupapa Māori
Kura Kaupapa Maori
Kura Kaupapa Māori are Māori-language immersion schools where the philosophy and practice reflect Māori cultural values with the aim of revitalising Māori language, knowledge and culture...
(Years 1 to 8 Māori-medium education programme) and later the first Wharekura (Years 9 to 13 Māori-medium education programme). Although "there was a true revival of te reo in the 1980s and early to-mid-1990s .... spurred on by the realisation of how few speakers were left, and by the relative abundance of older fluent speakers in both urban neighbourhoods and rural communities", the language has been in a "renewed decline" since (p. 439). The decline is believed "to have several underlying causes". These include:
-
-
- the ongoing loss of older native speakers who have spearheaded the revival movement;
- complacency brought about by the very existence of the institutions which drove the revival;
- concerns about quality, with the supply of good teachers never matching demand (even while that demand has been shrinking);
- excessive regulation and centralised control, which has alienated some of those involved in the movement; and
- an ongoing lack of educational resources needed to teach the full curriculum in te reo Māori.".
-
Based on the principles of partnership, Māori-speaking government, general revitalisation and dialectal protective policy,and adequate resourcing, the Waitangi Tribunal has recommended "four fundamental changes":
-
-
- Te Taura Whiri should become the lead Māori language sector agency. This will address the problems caused by the lack of ownership and leadership identified by the OAG.
- Te Taura Whiri should function as a Crown–Māori partnership through the equal appointment of Crown and Māori appointees to its board. This reflects our concern that te reo revival will not work if responsibility for setting the direction is not shared with Māori.
- Te Taura Whiri will also need increased powers. This will ensure that public bodies are compelled to contribute to te reo’s revival and that key agencies are held properly accountable for the strategies they adopt. For instance, targets for the training of te reo teachers must be met, education curricula involving te reo must be approved, and public bodies in districts with a sufficient number and/or proportion of te reo speakers and schools with a certain proportion of Māori students must submit Māori language plans for approval.
- These regional public bodies and schools must also consult iwi in the preparation of their plans. In this way, iwi will come to have a central role in the revitalisation of te reo in their own areas. This should encourage efforts to promote the language at the grassroots.
-
Linguistic classification
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
s classify Māori as a Polynesian language
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family, belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family. They fall into two branches: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. Polynesians share many cultural traits...
; specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language
Eastern Polynesian languages
The dozen Eastern Polynesian languages are found on Pacific Islands from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the southwest, to Easter Island in the southeast...
belonging to the Tahitic
Tahitic languages
The Tahitic languages are a group of Eastern Polynesian languages in the Central Eastern branch. ....
subgroup, which includes Rarotongan, spoken in the southern Cook Islands
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand...
, and Tahitian
Tahitian language
Tahitian is an indigenous language spoken mainly in the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to the other indigenous languages spoken in French Polynesia: Marquesan, Tuamotuan, Mangarevan, and Austral Islands languages...
, spoken in Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
and the Society Islands
Society Islands
The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...
. Other major Eastern Polynesian languages include Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, Marquesan
Marquesan language
Marquesan is a collection of East-Central Polynesian dialects, of the Marquesic group, spoken in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia. They are usually classified into two groups, North Marquesan and South Marquesan, roughly along geographic lines....
(languages in the Marquesic
Marquesic languages
Marquesic languages are a small but historically important subgroup of Central Eastern Polynesian languages:# Marquesan languages of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia...
subgroup), and the Rapa Nui language
Rapa Nui language
Rapa Nui , also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island....
of Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
.
While the preceding are all distinct languages, they remain similar enough that Tupaia
Tupaia (navigator)
Tupaia was a Polynesian navigator and arioi , originally from the island of Ra'iatea in the Pacific Islands group known to Europeans as the Society Islands. His remarkable navigational skills and Pacific geographical knowledge were to be utilised by Lt. James Cook, R.N...
, a Tahitian travelling with Captain James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
in 1769–1770, communicated effectively with Māori. Speakers of modern Māori generally report that they find the languages of the Cook Islands
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand...
, including Rarotongan, the easiest other Polynesian languages to understand and converse in. See also Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
.
Geographic distribution
Nearly all speakers are ethnic Māori resident in New Zealand. Estimates of the number of speakers vary: the 1996 census reported 160,000, while other estimates have reported as few as 10,000 fluent adult speakers in 1995 according to the Maori Language Commission.According to the 2006 census, 131,613 Māori (23.7%) "could [at least] hold a conversation about everyday things in te reo Māori". In the same census, Māori speakers were 4.2% of the New Zealand population.
The level of competence of self-professed Māori speakers varies from minimal to total. Statistics have not been gathered for the prevalence of different levels of competence. Only a minority of self-professed speakers use Māori as their main language in the home. The rest use only a few words or phrases (passive
Passive speakers (language)
A passive speaker is someone who has had enough exposure to a language in childhood to have a native-like comprehension of it, but has little or no active command of it....
bilingualism).
Māori is a community language in some predominantly-Māori settlements in the Northland, Urewera
Te Urewera
Te Urewera is an area of the central North Island of New Zealand. Located in rough, sparsely populated hill country to the northeast of Lake Taupo, it is the historical home of Tuhoe, a Māori iwi known for their controversial stance on Māori sovereignty...
and East Cape
East Cape
East Cape is the easternmost point of the main islands of New Zealand. It is located to the north of Gisborne in the northeast of the North Island....
areas. Kohanga reo
Kohanga reo
The Māori language revival is a movement to promote, reinforce and strengthen the speaking of the Māori language. Primarily in New Zealand, but also in centres with large numbers of New Zealand migrants , the movement aims to increase the use of Māori in the home, in education, government and...
Māori-immersion kindergartens throughout New Zealand use Māori exclusively. Increasing numbers of Māori raise their children bilingually
Urbanisation after the Second World War led to widespread language shift from Māori predominance (with Māori the primary language of the rural whānau
Whanau
Whānau , is a Māori-language word for extended family, now increasingly entering New Zealand English, particularly in official publications.In Māori society, the whānau is also a political unit, below the level of hapū and iwi, and the word itself also has other meanings: as a verb meaning to give...
) to English predominance (English serving as the primary language in the Pākehā
Pakeha
Pākehā is a Māori language word for New Zealanders who are "of European descent". They are mostly descended from British and to a lesser extent Irish settlers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although some Pākehā have Dutch, Scandinavian, German, Yugoslav or other ancestry...
cities). Therefore Māori-speakers almost always communicate bilingually, with New Zealand English
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
as either their first or second language.
The percentage prevalence of the Māori language in the Māori diaspora is far lower than in New Zealand. Census data from Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
show it as the home language of 5,504 people in 2001, or 7.5% of the Māori community in Australia. This represents an increase of 32.5% since 1996.
Orthography
The modern Māori alphabet has 20 letters, two of which are digraphs: A Ā E Ē H I Ī K M N O Ō P R T U Ū W NG and WH.Attempts to write Māori words using the Roman alphabet began with Captain James Cook and other early explorers, with varying degrees of success. Consonants seem to have caused the most difficulty, but medial and final vowels are often missing in early sources. Anne Salmond records aghee for aki (In the year 1773, from the North Island East Coast, p. 98), Toogee and E tanga roak for Tuki and Tangaroa (1793, Northland, p216), Kokramea, Kakramea for Kakaramea (1801, Hauraki, p261), toges for toki(s), Wannugu for Uenuku and gumera for kumara (1801, Hauraki, p261, p266, p269), Weygate for Waikato (1801, Hauraki, p277), Bunga Bunga for pungapunga, tubua for tupua and gure for kurī (1801, Hauraki, p279), as well as Tabooha for Te Puhi (1823, Northern Northland, p385).
From 1814, missionaries tried to define the sounds of the language. William Kendall published a book in 1815 entitled He Korao no New Zealand, which in modern orthography and usage would be He Kōrero nō Aotearoa. Professor Samuel Lee, working with chief Hongi Hika
Hongi Hika
Hongi Hika was a New Zealand Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāpuhi iwi . Hongi Hika used European weapons to overrun much of northern New Zealand in the first of the Musket Wars...
and Hongi's junior relative Waikato at Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, established a definitive orthography based on Northern usage in 1820. Professor Lee's orthography continues in use, with only two major changes: the addition of wh to distinguish the bilabial voiceless fricative phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
from the labio-velar phoneme /w/; and the consistent marking of long vowels. The macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
has become the generally accepted device for marking long vowels (hāngi), but double vowel letters have also been used (haangi).
The Māori embraced literacy enthusiastically, and missionaries reported in the 1820s that Māori all over the country taught each other to read and write, using sometimes quite innovative materials in the absence of paper, such as leaves and charcoal, carved wood, and hides.
Long vowels
The alphabet devised at Cambridge University was deficient in that it did not mark vowel length. The following examples show that vowel length is phonemic in Māori:- ata 'morning', āta 'carefully'
- mana 'prestige', māna 'for him/her'
- manu 'bird', mānu 'to float'
- o 'of', ō 'provisions for a journey'
- wahine 'woman', wāhine 'women'
Māori devised ways to mark vowel-length, sporadically at first. Occasional and inconsistent vowel-length markings occur in 19th-century manuscripts and newspapers written by Māori, including macron-like diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s and the doubling of letters. Māori writer Hare Hongi (Henry Stowell) uses macrons in his Maori-English Tutor and Vade Mecum of 1911, as does Sir Apirana Ngata
Apirana Ngata
Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata was a prominent New Zealand politician and lawyer. He has often been described as the foremost Māori politician to have ever served in Parliament, and is also known for his work in promoting and protecting Māori culture and language.-Early life:One of 15 children, Ngata...
, inconsistently, in his Maori Grammar and Conversation (7th printing 1953). Once the Māori language started to be taught in universities in the 1960s, vowel-length marking was made systematic. At Auckland University, Professor Bruce Biggs
Bruce Biggs
Bruce Grandison Biggs became an influential figure in the academic field of Māori studies in New Zealand...
(of Ngāti Maniapoto
Ngati Maniapoto
Ngāti Maniapoto is an iwi based in the Waikato-Waitomo region of New Zealand's North Island. It is part of the Tainui confederation, the members of which trace their whakapapa back to people who arrived in New Zealand on the waka Tainui...
descent) promoted the use of double vowels (thus Maaori), and this became the standard at Auckland until Biggs died in 2000. The Māori Language Commission
Maori Language Commission
New Zealand's Māori Language Commission is an autonomous crown entity set up under the Māori Language Act 1987 with the following functions:...
, set up by Māori Language Act 1987 to act as the authority for Māori spelling and orthography, favours the use of macrons, which are now the established means of indicating long vowels.
Phonology
Māori has five phonemically distinct vowel articulations and ten consonant phonemes.Vowels
Although it is commonly claimed that vowel realisations (pronunciations) in Māori show little variation, linguistic research has shown this not to be the case.Vowel length is phonemic; but four of the five long vowels occur in only a handful of word roots, the exception being /ā/. As noted above, it has recently become standard in Māori spelling to indicate a long vowel by a macron.
As in many other Polynesian languages, there are no true diphthongs in Māori (when two vowels are adjacent, each belongs to a different syllable), and all or nearly all sequences of nonidentical vowels are possible. All sequences of nonidentical short vowels occur and are phonemically distinct.
The following table shows the five vowel phonemes and the allophones for some of them according to Bauer 1997. Some of these phonemes occupy large spaces in the anatomical vowel triangle (actually a trapezoid) of tongue positions. For example, /u/ is sometimes realised as IPA [ʉ].
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i | u [ʉ] | |
| Open-Mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
e [ɛ] | o [ɔ] | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a |
Diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s are /ae, ai, ao, au, oi, oe, ou/.
Consonants
The consonant phonemes of Māori are listed in the following table. Seven of the ten Māori consonant lettersOrthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
have the same pronunciation as they do in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For those that do not, the IPA phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds . The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, e.g., the International Phonetic Alphabet....
is included, enclosed in square brackets per IPA convention. Māori stops /p, t, k/ are nonaspirated, unlike in English. Māori /ɾ/ is a tap
Alveolar tap
The alveolar flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar flaps is .-Definition:...
, similar to the r in "very" in many dialects of England (and slightly less similar to the t in the American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
pronunciation of "city" or "letter").
| Bilabial | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonaspirated Plosive | p | t | k | |
| Voiceless Fricative | wh [f, ɸ] |
h | ||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ng [ŋ] |
|
| Tap Flap consonant In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:... |
r [ɾ] |
|||
| Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... |
w |
The pronunciation of
Voiceless labiodental fricative
The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the voiceless labiodental fricative:...
, IPA [f] found in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Another allophone is the bilabial fricative, IPA [ɸ], which is usually supposed to be the sole pre-European pronunciation, although in fact linguists are not sure of the truth of this supposition.
Because English stops /p, t, k/ primarily have aspiration, speakers of English often hear the Māori nonaspirated stops as English /b, d, g/. English speakers also tend to hear Māori /r/ as English /l/. These ways of hearing have given rise to place-name spellings which are incorrect in Maori, like Tolaga Bay
Tolaga Bay
Tolaga Bay is both a bay and small town on the East Coast of New Zealand's North Island located 45 kilometres northeast of Gisborne and 30 kilometres south of Tokomaru Bay.It was named Tolaga Bay by Lt...
in the North Island and Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
and Waihola
Waihola
The township of Waihola lies between Dunedin and Milton, New Zealand in Otago, in New Zealand's South Island. It lies close to the southeast shore of the shallow tidal lake which shares its name....
in the South Island.
Syllables
SyllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s in Māori have one of the following forms: V, VV, CV, CVV. This set of four can be summarized by the notation, (C)V(V), in which the segments in parentheses may or may not be present. A syllable cannot begin with two consonant sounds (the digraphs
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
ng and wh represent single consonant sounds), and cannot end in a consonant, although some speakers may occasionally devoice a final vowel. All possible CV combinations are grammatical, though wo, who, wu, and whu occur only in a few loanwords from English such as wuru, "wool" and whutuporo, "football".
As in many other Polynesian languages, e.g., Hawaiian, the rendering of loanwords from English includes representing every English consonant of the loanword (using the native consonant inventory; English has 24 consonants to 10 for Māori) and breaking up consonant clusters. For example, "Presbyterian" has been borrowed as Perehipeteriana; no consonant position in the loanword has been deleted, but /s/ and /b/ have been replaced with /h/ and /p/, respectively.)
Stress is typically within the last four syllables of a word. It falls preferentially on the first long vowel, on the first diphthong if there is no long vowel, and on the first syllable otherwise.
Dialects
Biggs proposed that historically there were two major dialect groups, North Island and South Island. South Island Māori is extinct Biggs has analysed North Island Māori as comprising a western group and an eastern group with the boundary between them running pretty much along the island's north-south axis.Within these broad divisions regional variations occur, and individual regions show tribal variations. The major differences occur in the pronunciation of words, variation of vocabulary, and idiom. A fluent speaker of Māori has no problem understanding other dialects.
There is no significant variation in grammar between dialects. Vocabulary and pronunciation vary to a greater extent, but this does not pose barriers to communication.
North Island dialects
In the southwest of the island, in the WhanganuiWhanganui
Various places in New Zealand are called Whanganui:*Whanganui, a city at the mouth of the Whanganui River, also often spelled "Wanganui", Manawatu-Wanganui Region*Whanganui District, Manawatu-Wanganui Region*Whanganui Island, Waikato Region...
and Taranaki regions, the phoneme /h/ is a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
and the phoneme /wh/ is [ʔw]. In Tūhoe and the Eastern Bay of Plenty (northeastern North Island) ng has merged with n. In parts of the Far North, wh has merged with w.
South Island dialects
In the extinct South Island dialects, ng merged with k in many regions. Thus Kāi Tahu and Ngāi Tahu are variations in the name of the same tribe (the latter form is the one used in acts of Parliament). Since 2000, the government has altered the official names of several southern place names to the southern dialect forms by replacing ng with k. New Zealand's highest mountain, known for centuries as Aoraki in southern Māori dialects that merge ng with k, and as Aorangi by other Māori, was later named "Mount Cook", in honor of Captain CookJames Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
. Now its sole official name is Aoraki/Mount Cook
Aoraki/Mount Cook
Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, reaching .It lies in the Southern Alps, the mountain range which runs the length of the South Island. A popular tourist destination, it is also a favourite challenge for mountain climbers...
, which favors the local dialect form. Likewise, Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...
's main research library, the Hocken Library
Hocken Library
The Hocken Library is a research library, historical archive and art gallery based in the New Zealand city of Dunedin...
, has the name Te Uare Taoka o Hākena rather than northern Te Whare Taonga o Hākena. Goodall & Griffiths say there is also a voicing of k to g – this is why the region of Otago
Otago
Otago is a region of New Zealand in the south of the South Island. The region covers an area of approximately making it the country's second largest region. The population of Otago is...
(southern dialect) and the settlement it is named after – Otakou
Otakou
The settlement of Otakou lies within the boundaries of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. It is located 25 kilometres from the city centre at the eastern end of Otago Peninsula, close to the entrance of Otago Harbour.-Overview:...
(standard Māori) – vary in spelling (the pronunciation of the latter having changed over time to accommodate the northern spelling).
The standard Māori r is also found occasionally changed to an l in these southern dialects and the wh to w. These changes are most commonly found in place names, such as Lake Waihola
Lake Waihola
Lake Waihola is a tidal freshwater lake located 15 km north of Milton in Otago, in New Zealand's South Island. Its area is some 9 square kilometres, with a maximum length of 6 kilometres....
and the nearby coastal settlement of Wangaloa (which would, in standard Māori, be rendered Whangaroa), and Little Akaloa, on Banks Peninsula
Banks Peninsula
Banks Peninsula is a peninsula of volcanic origin on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It has an area of approximately and encompasses two large harbours and many smaller bays and coves...
. M. Goodall & Griffiths claim that final vowels are given a centralised pronunciation as schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
or that they are elided
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
, resulting in such seemingly-bastardised place names as The Kilmog
The Kilmog
The Kilmog is a hilly area approximately 20 kilometres north of Dunedin, New Zealand, on State Highway 1, to the north of Blueskin Bay and south of Karitane...
, which in standard Māori would have been rendered Kirimoko, but which in southern dialect would have been pronounced very much as the current name suggests. This same elision is found in numerous other southern placenames, such as the two small settlements called The Kaik, near Palmerston
Palmerston, New Zealand
The town of Palmerston, in New Zealand's South Island lies 50 kilometres to the north of the city of Dunedin. It is the largest town in the Waihemo Ward of the Waitaki District with a population of 890 residents...
and Akaroa
Akaroa
Akaroa is a village on Banks Peninsula in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand, situated within a harbour of the same name—the name Akaroa is Kāi Tahu Māori for 'Long Harbour'.- Overview :...
, and the early spelling of Lake Wakatipu
Lake Wakatipu
Lake Wakatipu is an inland lake in the South Island of New Zealand. It is in the southwest corner of Otago Region, near its boundary with Southland.With a length of , it is New Zealand's longest lake, and, at , its third largest...
as Wagadib. In standard Māori, Wakatipu would have been rendered Whakatipua, showing further the elision of a final vowel.
Bases
Biggs (Biggs 1998) developed an analysis that the basic unit of Māori speech is the phrase, rather than the word. The lexical word forms the "base" of the phrase. "Nouns" include those bases that can take a definite article, but cannot occur as the nucleus of a verbal phrase; for example: ika (fish) or rākau (tree). Plurality is usually marked only by the definite article (singular te, plural ngā). Some nouns lengthen a vowel in the plural, such as wahine (woman); wāhine (women).Statives serve as bases usable as verbs but not available for passive use, such as ora, alive, tika, correct. Grammars generally refer to them as "stative verbs". When used in sentences, statives require different syntax than other verb-like bases.
Locative bases can follow the locative particle ki (to, towards) directly, such as runga, above, waho, outside, and placenames (ki Tamaki, to Auckland).
Personal bases take the personal article a after ki, such as names of people (ki a Hohepa, to Joseph), personified houses, personal pronouns, wai? who? and Mea, so-and-so.
Particles
Like all Polynesian languages, Māori has a rich array of particles. These include verbal particles, pronouns, locative particles, definitives and possessives.Verbal particles indicate aspectual properties of the verb they relate to. They include ka (inceptive), i (past), kua(perfect), kia (desiderative), me (prescriptive), e (non-past), kei (warning, “lest”), ina or ana (punctative-conditional, "if and when"), and e … ana (imperfect).
Pronouns have singular, dual and plural number. Different first-person forms in the dual and in the plural express groups either inclusive or exclusive of the listener.
Locative particles refer to position in time and/or space, and include ki (towards), kei (at), i (past position), and hei (future position).
Possessives fall into one of two classes marked by a and o, depending on the dominant versus subordinate relationship between possessor and possessed, so ngā tamariki a te matua, the children of the parent, but te matua o ngā tamariki, the parent of the children.
Definitives include the articles te (singular) and ngā (plural) and the possessives tā and tō. These also combine with the pronouns. Demonstratives have a deictic function, and include tēnei, this (near me), tēnā, that (near you), tērā, that (far from us both), and taua, the aforementioned. Other definitives include tēhea? (which?), and tētahi, (a certain).Definitives that begin with t form the plural by dropping the t: tēnei (this), ēnei (these).
Bases as qualifiers
In general, bases used as qualifiers follow the base they qualify, e.g. "matua wahine" (mother, female elder) from "matua" (parent, elder) "wahine" (woman).Personal pronouns
Like other Polynesian languages, Māori has three numbersGrammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
for pronouns and possessives: singular, dual
Dual (grammatical number)
Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...
and plural. For example: ia (he/she), rāua (they two), rātou (they, three or more). The dual and plural suffixes are modern reflexes of historical words rua and toru. Māori pronouns and possessives further distinguish exclusive "we" from inclusive "we", second and third. It has the plural pronouns: mātou (we, exc), tātou (we, inc), koutou (you), rātou (they). The language features the dual pronouns: māua (we two, exc), tāua (we two, inc), kōrua (you two), rāua (they two). The difference between exclusive and inclusive
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
lies in the treatment of the person addressed. Mātou refers to the speaker and others but not the person or persons spoken to (i.e., "I and some others, but not you"), while tātou refers to the speaker, the person or persons spoken to, and everyone else (i.e., "you and I and others"). Examples:
- Tēnā koe: hello (to one person)
- Tēnā kōrua: hello (to two people)
- Tēnā koutou: hello (to more than two people)
Calendar
From missionary times, Māori used transliterations of English names for days of the week and for months of the year. Since about 1990 the Māori Language Commission / Te Taura Whiri o te Reo Māori has promoted new ("traditional") sets. Its days of the week have no pre-European equivalent but reflect the pagan origins of the English names (for example, Hina = moon). The commission based the months of the year on one of the traditional tribal lunar calendarLunar calendar
A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phase. A common purely lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar or Hijri calendar. A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to...
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See also
- Māori influence on New Zealand EnglishMaori influence on New Zealand EnglishDuring the 19th century, New Zealand English gained many loanwords from the Māori language, mainly the names of birds, plants, fishes and places, but the flow stopped abruptly around the beginning of the 20th century...
- Māori people
- Māori Language WeekMaori Language WeekMāori Language Week, te wiki o te reo Māori, is a government-sponsored initiative intended to encourage New Zealanders to promote the use of Māori language. Māori, English and New Zealand Sign Language are the official national languages of New Zealand...
, celebrated in the last week of July
External links
- Māori Language Act 1987
- korero.maori.nz Māori language educational resources
- Ethnologue report for Maori
- Māori Language Commission (sets definitive standards).
- English and Māori Word Translator, originally developed at the University of OtagoUniversity of OtagoThe University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...
. - Ngata Māori–English English–Māori Dictionary from Learning Media; gives several options and shows use in phrases.
- Collection of historic Māori newspapers
- Maori Phonology
- maorilanguage.net Learn the basics of Māori Language with video tutorials
- Microsoft New Zealand Māori Keyboard
- Maori Language Week (NZHistory) – includes a history of the Māori language, the Treaty of Waitangi Māori Language claim and 100 words every New Zealander should know
- Huia Publishers, catalogue includes Tirohia Kimihia the world's first Māori monolingual dictionary for learners
- IMDb website; Māori language films
- Publications about Māori language from Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Māori Development