Māori language << MOW ree or MAH ree >> is the language of the Indigenous (native) people of New Zealand. Māori is one of three official languages of New Zealand. The other two are English and New Zealand Sign Language.
Scientists and linguists (scholars who study languages) believe the Māori people migrated to New Zealand from Polynesian islands sometime before 1200 (see Pacific Islands). They brought what they now call te reo (the language) with them.
The Māori language belongs to the Austronesian language family. It is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group of languages, one of the two groups that make up the Austronesian languages. The Māori language is an Eastern Polynesian language that is closely related to the languages spoken in the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, the Tuamotu Archipelago, Hawaii, the Marquesas Islands, and Easter Island. It is less closely related to the Western Polynesian languages spoken in the South Pacific island nations of Tonga and Samoa. Māori is composed of different dialects (varieties of a language used by particular groups of speakers). The differences mostly involve pronunciation.
Māori was not originally a written language. It had a large body of oral literature. The Māori people developed a great ability to remember this literature. The literature included songs (waiata); rhythmic body movements known as posture dances (haka); and cultural, practical, and historical knowledge handed down from one generation to the next. Formal speechmaking, or oratory (whaikōrero); family histories (whakapapa); ancient stories (pūrākau); and traditional prayers (karakia) were also highly developed arts.
British immigrants began settling in New Zealand in the early 1800’s (see New Zealand, History of). These early Europeans developed a written form for Māori. The language has 20 meaningful sounds. The five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) each have a short form and a long form. The long vowels are indicated by a macron (bar) across the top of the vowel (ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū). In the past, long vowels were also sometimes indicated by using two of the unmarked vowels in a row.
The other sounds of the language are h, k, m, n, ng, p, r, t, w, and wh. Most of these consonants are pronounced the same way they are pronounced in English. Although written with two letters, ng and wh represent single sounds. The ng sound is pronounced as the ng in singer. The pronunciation of wh varies, but it is usually pronounced in modern Māori as an f. Every consonant in Māori is followed by one or more vowels, which means that every word ends in a vowel. Vowels can occur together without any consonants between them—for example, ināianei (now).
Some words now used in Māori have been taken from English and other languages and adapted to the sound and grammar systems of Māori. Some examples include iāri (yard), hōhipera (hospital), Kōtimana (Scottish, Scotsman), tereina (train), and tākuta (doctor). Likewise, some Māori words have been incorporated into New Zealand English, including haka (a Māori dance) and the common names of native plants and birds, such as the kiwi (a flightless bird of New Zealand). The people of New Zealand are also often called Kiwis.
During the 1900’s, the number of speakers of Māori gradually decreased. The process accelerated with the beginning of World War II (1939-1945). The war led many Māori to leave their rural communities and seek work in the cities. By the early 2000’s, fewer than 25 percent of the Māori people could hold a conversation in their native language. A very few non-Māori people (commonly called Pākehā) speak Māori. The language is taught and used in many schools throughout New Zealand, from the preschool level to the university level.
