Māori language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Māori
Māori, te reo Māori
Native to	New Zealand
Region	Polynesia
Ethnicity	Māori
Native speakers	50,000 (well or very well)  (2015) 186,000 (some knowledge) (2018)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Polynesian Eastern Polynesian Tahitic Māori–Moriori Māori
Writing system	Latin (Māori alphabet) Māori Braille
Official status
Official language in	New Zealand
Regulated by	Māori Language Commission
Linguasphere	39-CAQ-a
Māori language distribution within New Zealand
Māori is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Māori, or te reo Māori ('the Māori language'), commonly shortened to te reo, is an Eastern Polynesian language and the language of the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. A member of the Austronesian language family, it is related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian. The Maori Language Act 1987 gave the language recognition as one of New Zealand's official languages. There are regional dialects. Prior to contact with Europeans, Māori lacked a written language or script. Written Māori now uses the Latin script, which was adopted and the spelling standardised by Northern Māori in collaboration with English Protestant clergy in the 19th century.

In the second half of the 19th century European children in rural areas spoke Māori with Māori children. It was common for prominent parents of these children, such as government officials, to use Māori in the community. Māori declined due to the increase of the European population and linguistic discrimination, including the Native Schools Act 1867, which barred the speaking of Māori in schools. The number of speakers fell sharply after 1945, but a Māori language revival movement began in the late 20th century and slowed the decline. The Māori protest movement and the Māori renaissance of the 1970s caused greater social awareness of and support for the language. The spread of kōhanga reo, or Māori-language kindergartens, has increased native speakers.

The 2018 New Zealand census reported that about 190,000 people, or 4% of the population, could hold an everyday conversation in Māori. As of 2015^[update], 55% of Māori adults reported some knowledge of the language; of these, 64% use Māori at home and around 50,000 people can speak the language "well". Ideological support for the language remains high among Māori, relatives and other New Zealanders in general, with the number of second language students increasing by 76% from 2013 to 2022.

In Māori culture, the language is considered to be among the greatest of all taonga, or cultural treasures. Māori is known for its metaphorical poetry and prose, often in the form of karakia, whaikōrero, whakapapa and karanga, and in performing arts such as mōteatea, waiata, and haka.

Name

The English word Maori is a borrowing from the Māori language, where it is spelled Māori. In New Zealand, the Māori language is often referred to as te reo ("the language"), short for te reo Māori ("the Māori language").

Official status

Bilingual sign at railway station in Auckland, New Zealand

New Zealand has two de jure official languages: Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, whereas New Zealand English acts as a de facto official language. Te reo Māori gained its official status with the passing of the Māori Language Act 1987.

Most government departments and agencies have bilingual names—for example, the Department of Internal Affairs is alternatively Te Tari Taiwhenua—and places such as local government offices and public libraries display bilingual signs and use bilingual stationery; some government services now even use the Māori version solely as the official name. Personal dealings with government agencies may be conducted in Māori, but in practice, this almost always requires interpreters, 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 the New Zealand Parliament for instances when a member wishes to speak in Māori. Māori may be spoken in judicial proceedings, but any party wishing to do so must notify the court in advance to ensure an interpreter is available. Failure to notify in advance does not preclude the party speaking in Māori, but the court must be adjourned until an interpreter is available and the party may be held liable for the costs of the delay.

A 1994 ruling by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (then New Zealand's highest court) held the 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. The first Māori TV channel, Aotearoa Television Network (ATN) was available to viewers in the Auckland region from 1996 but lasted for only one year.

In 2008, Land Information New Zealand published the first list of official place names with macrons. Previous place name lists were derived from computer systems (usually mapping and geographic information systems) that could not handle macrons.

History

Origins

"First Lessons in the Maori Language", 1862,
by W. L. Williams, third Bishop of Waiapu

According to legend, Māori came to New Zealand from Hawaiki. Current anthropological thinking places their origin in eastern Polynesia, mostly likely from the Southern Cook or Society Islands region (see Māori language § Notes), and says that they arrived by deliberate voyages in seagoing canoes, possibly double-hulled, and probably sail-rigged. These settlers probably arrived by AD 1350 at the latest.

Māori evolved in isolation from other Polynesian languages. Six dialectal variations emerged among iwi due to geographical separation. The language had no written form, but historian Sarah J. K. Gallagher has argued that tā moko, the indigenous art of tattooing, is arguably "a pre-European textual culture in New Zealand... as the Moko can be read, it can be accepted as a form of communication". The idea that tā moko is a written language of sorts has been discussed before.

Since its origin, the Māori language has been rich in metaphorical poetry and prose. Forms of this include karakia, whaikōrero, whakapapa and karanga, and in performing arts such as mōteatea, waiata and haka. Karakia are Māori incantations used to invoke spiritual guidance and protection, and are used before eating or gathering, to increase spiritual goodwill and to declare things officially open. Whaikōrero is the term given to traditional oratory given on marae, and whakapapa is the story of one's ancestry. According to historian Atholl Anderson, whakapapa utilised "mnemonic devices, repetitive patterns [and] rhyme" in order to leave a lasting impression. "Casting knowledge in formulaic or other standarised story forms.. helped to fix the information in the minds of speakers and listeners".

European contact

Through the nineteenth century, the Māori language had a tumultuous history. It started this period as the predominant language of New Zealand, and it was adopted by European traders and missionaries for their purposes. 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. From the mid-19th century, due to the Native Schools Act and later the Native Schools Code, the use of Māori in schools was slowly filtered out of the curriculum in order for pupils to become more European. Increasing numbers of Māori people learned English.

Decline

Until the Second World War (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 appeared in Māori, along with many newspapers.

Before 1880, some Māori parliamentarians suffered disadvantages because parliamentary proceedings took place in English. However, by 1900, all Māori members of parliament, such as Āpirana Ngata, were university graduates who spoke fluent English. From this period greater emphasis was placed on Māori learning English, but it was not until the migration of Māori to urban areas after the Second World War (the Urban Māori) that the number of speakers of Māori began to decline rapidly. During this period, Māori was forbidden at many schools, and any use of the language was met with corporal punishment. In recent years, prominent Māori have spoken with sadness about their experiences or experiences of their family members being caned, strapped or beaten in school.

By the 1980s, fewer than 20 per cent of Māori spoke the language well enough to be classed as native speakers. Even many of those people no longer spoke Māori in their homes. As a result, many Māori children failed to learn their ancestral language, and generations of non-Māori-speaking Māori emerged.

Revival since 2015

Beginning in about 2015, the Māori language underwent a revival as it became increasingly popular, as a common national heritage and shared cultural identity, even among New Zealanders without Māori roots. Surveys from 2018 indicated that "the Māori language currently enjoys a high status in Māori society and also positive acceptance by the majority of non-Māori New Zealanders".

As the status and prestige of the language rose, so did the demand for language classes. Businesses, including Google, Microsoft, Vodafone NZ and Fletcher Building, were quick to adopt the trend as it became apparent that using te reo made customers think of a company as "committed to New Zealand". The language became increasingly heard in the media and in politics. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—who gave her daughter a Māori middle name, and said she would learn both Māori and English—made headlines when she toasted Commonwealth leaders in 2018 with a Māori proverb, and the success of Māori musical groups such as Alien Weaponry and Maimoa further increased the language's presence in social media. Disney has dubbed its animated films in Māori since Moana (2017).

In August 2017, Rotorua became the first city in New Zealand to declare itself as bilingual in the Māori and English languages, meaning that both languages would be promoted. In 2019, the New Zealand government launched the Maihi Karauna Māori language revitalisation strategy with a goal of 1 million people speaking te reo Māori by 2040. Also in 2019, Kotahi Rau Pukapuka Trust and Auckland University Press began work on publishing a sizeable library of local and international literature in the language, including the Harry Potter books.

Some New Zealanders have pushed against the revival, debating the replacement of English-language place names with original Māori names, criticising a police car having Māori language and graphics, and complaining about te reo Māori being used by broadcasters. In March 2021, the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) said it would no longer entertain complaints regarding the use of the Māori language in broadcasts. This followed a fivefold increase in complaints to the BSA. The use of Māori in itself does not breach any broadcasting standards.

Linguistic classification

Comparative linguists classify Māori as a Polynesian language, specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language belonging to the Tahitic subgroup, which includes Cook Islands Māori, 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. Māori actors, travelling to Easter Island for production of the film Rapa-Nui noticed a marked similarity between the native tongues, as did arts curator Reuben Friend, who noted that it took only a short time to pick up any different vocabulary and the different nuances to recognisable words. Speakers of modern Māori generally report that they find the languages of the Cook Islands, including Rarotongan, the easiest amongst the other Polynesian languages to understand and converse in.

Geographic distribution

Speakers of Māori according to the 2013 census:      < 5%      5–10%      10–20%      20–30%      30–40%      40–50%      > 50%

Nearly all speakers are ethnic Māori residents of New Zealand. Estimates of the number of speakers vary: the 1996 census reported 160,000, while a 1995 national survey reported about 10,000 “very fluent” adult speakers. As reported in the 2013 national census, only 21.3% of self-identified Māori had a conversational knowledge of the language, and only around 6.5% of those speakers, 1.4% of the total Māori population, spoke the Māori language only. This percentage has been in decline in recent years, from around a quarter of the population to 21%. In the same census, Māori speakers were 3.7% of the total 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 at home. The rest use only a few words or phrases (passive bilingualism).

Māori still^[update] 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. Only around 9,000 people speak only in Māori.

The use of the Māori language in the Māori diaspora is far lower than in New Zealand itself. Census data from Australia show it as the home language of 11,747, just 8.2% of the total Australian Māori population in 2016.

Orthography

The modern Māori alphabet has 15 letters, two of which are digraphs (character pairs). The five vowels have both short and long forms, with the long forms denoted by macrons marked above them.

The order of the alphabet is as follows: A, E, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, W, Ng, Wh.

This standard orthography may be tweaked to represent certain dialects of Māori:

• An underlined "k" sometimes appears when writing the Southern dialect, to indicate that the /k/ in question corresponds to the ng of the standard language.
• Both L and G are also encountered in the Southern dialect, though not in standard Māori.
• Various methods are used to indicate glottal stops when writing the Whanganui dialect.

History

There was originally no native writing system for Māori. It has been suggested that the petroglyphs once used by the Māori developed into a script similar to the Rongorongo of Easter Island. However, there is no evidence that these petroglyphs ever evolved into a true system of writing. Some distinctive markings among the kōwhaiwhai (rafter paintings) of meeting houses were used as mnemonics in reciting whakapapa (genealogy) but again, there was no systematic relation between marks and meanings.

Attempts to write Māori words using the Latin script 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, p. 216), Kokramea, Kakramea for Kakaramea (1801, Hauraki, p. 261), toges for tokis, Wannugu for Uenuku and gumera for kumara (1801, Hauraki, pp. 261, 266 and 269), Weygate for Waikato (1801, Hauraki, p. 277), Bunga Bunga for pungapunga, tubua for tupua and gure for kurī (1801, Hauraki, p. 279), as well as Tabooha for Te Puhi (1823, Northern Northland, p. 385).

From 1814, missionaries tried to define the sounds of the language. Thomas Kendall published a book in 1815 entitled A korao no New Zealand, which in modern orthography and usage would be He Kōrero nō Aotearoa. Beginning in 1817, professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University worked with the Ngāpuhi chief Tītore and his junior relative Tui (also known as Tuhi or Tupaea), and then with chief Hongi Hika and his junior relative Waikato; they established a definitive orthography based on Northern usage, published as the First Grammar and Vocabulary of the New Zealand Language (1820). The missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) did not have a high regard for this book. By 1830 the CMS missionaries had revised the orthography for writing the Māori language; for example, 'Kiddeekiddee' was changed to the modern spelling, 'Kerikeri'. This orthography continues to be used, with only two major changes: the addition of wh to distinguish the voiceless bilabial fricative phoneme from the labio-velar phoneme and the consistent marking of long vowels.

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, and flax. Missionary James West Stack recorded the scarcity of slates and writing materials at the native schools and the use sometimes of "pieces of board on which sand was sprinkled, and the letters traced upon the sand with a pointed stick".

Long vowels

The alphabet devised at Cambridge University does not mark vowel length. The examples in the following table show that vowel length is phonemic in Māori.

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 diacritics and doubling of letters. Māori writer Hare Hongi (Henry Stowell) used macrons in his Maori-English Tutor and Vade Mecum of 1911, as does Sir Āpirana Ngata (albeit inconsistently) in his Maori Grammar and Conversation (7th printing 1953). Once the Māori language was taught in universities in the 1960s, vowel-length marking was made systematic. Bruce Biggs, of Ngāti Maniapoto descent and professor at the University of Auckland, promoted the use of double vowels (e.g. waahine); this style was standard at the university until Biggs died in 2000.

Macrons (tohutō) are now the standard means of indicating long vowels, after becoming the favoured option of the Māori Language Commission—set up by the Māori Language Act 1987 to act as the authority for Māori spelling and orthography. Most news media now use macrons; Stuff websites and newspapers since 2017, TVNZ and NZME websites and newspapers since 2018.

Technical limitations in producing macronised vowels on typewriters and older computer systems are sometimes resolved by using a diaeresis or circumflex instead of a macron (e.g., wähine or wâhine).

Double vowels continue to be used in a few exceptional cases, including:

• The Waikato-Tainui iwi preference is for using doubled vowels; hence in the Waikato region, double vowels are used by the Hamilton City Council, Waikato District Council and Waikato Museum.
• Inland Revenue continues to spell its Māori name Te Tari Taake instead of Te Tari Tāke, mainly to reduce the resemblance of tāke to the English word 'take'.
• A considerable number of governmental and non-governmental organisations continue to use the older spelling of ⟨roopu⟩ ('association') in their names rather than the more modern form ⟨rōpū⟩. Examples include Te Roopu Raranga Whatu o Aotearoa ('the national Māori weavers' collective') and Te Roopu Pounamu (a Māori-specific organisation within the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand).
• Double vowels are also used instead of macrons in long vowels resultant from compounding (e.g. Mātaatua) or reduplication.

Grammar and syntax

Māori has mostly a verb-subject-object (VSO) word order. It is also analytical, featuring almost no inflection, and makes extensive use of grammatical particles to indicate grammatical categories of tense, mood, aspect, case, topicalization, among others. The personal pronouns have a distinction in clusivity, singular, dual and plural numbers, and the genitive pronouns have different classes (a class, o class and neutral) according to whether the possession is alienable or the possessor has control of the relationship (a category), or the possession is inalienable or the possessor has no control over the relationship (o category), and a third neutral class that only occurs for singular pronouns and must be followed by a noun. There is also subject-object-verb (SOV) word order used in passive sentences. Examples of this include Nāku te ngohi i tunu ("I cooked the fish"; literally I the fish cooked) and Mā wai te haka e kaea? ("Who will lead the haka?").

Influence on New Zealand English

New Zealand English has gained many loanwords from Māori, mainly the names of birds, plants, fishes and places. For example, the kiwi, the national bird, takes its name from te reo. "Kia ora" (literally "be healthy") is a widely adopted greeting of Māori origin, with the intended meaning of "hello". It can also mean "thank you", or signify agreement with a speaker at a meeting. The Māori greetings tēnā koe (to one person), tēnā kōrua (to two people) or tēnā koutou (to three or more people) are also widely used, as are farewells such as haere rā. The Māori phrase kia kaha, "be strong", is frequently encountered as an indication of moral support for someone starting a stressful undertaking or otherwise in a difficult situation. Many other words such as whānau (meaning "family") and kai (meaning "food") are also widely understood and used by New Zealanders. The Māori phrase Ka kite anō means 'until I see you again' is quite commonly used.

In 2023, 47 words or expressions from New Zealand English, mostly from te reo Māori were added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Demographics

Online translators

Māori is available on Google Translate, Microsoft Translator and Yandex Translate. Another popular online dictionary is Te Aka Māori Dictionary.

Images for kids

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  He Taonga Te Reo – a celebration of Maori Language poster, Wellington Public Library (1995)

• 

  Bastion Point land rights activists with Māori-language signs

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  Bilingual sign in Broadwood, Northland

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  North Island dialects

See also

In Spanish: Idioma maorí para niños