Māori or te reo Māori (pronounced [ˈmaːoɾi, te ˈɾeo ˈmaːoɾi]) commonly te reo ("the language"), is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses , and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. The indigenous Māori language name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, commonly translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. The Realm of New Zealand also, the Māori The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand (Aotearoa). They arrived from East Polynesia in several waves at some time before the year 1300, settled and developed a distinct culture. Their language is very closely related to Cook Islands Māori and Tahitian, where it has the status of an 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 language a legal status, even if that language is not. Linguists classify it within the Eastern Polynesian languages as being closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan and Tahitian Tahitian, a Tahitic language, spoken by Tahitians, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia[citation needed] . It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian; somewhat less closely to Hawaiian The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, 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. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840 and Marquesan; and more distantly to the languages of Western Polynesia, including Samoan Sāmoan is the language of the Samoa Islands comprising the independent country of Samoa and the US territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Sāmoan is the first language for most of the Samoa Islands' population of about 246,000. With many Sāmoan people living in other countries, the, Tokelauan, Niuean and Tongan Tongan is an Austronesian language spoken in Tonga. It has around 100,000 speakers and is a national language of Tonga. It is a VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language.

Contents

Official status

New Zealand has three official languages 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 protect and promote regional and ethnic languages — Māori, English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of and New Zealand Sign Language.[2] 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 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 unions; providing daylight saving policy advise; and Te Tari Taiwhenua, and places such as local government offices and public libraries display bilingual signs and use bilingual stationery. New Zealand Post The company was created in 1 April 1987 as a State-Owned Enterprise from the corporatisation of the New Zealand Post Office, a government department, following the recommendations of the 1986 Mason-Morris Review. The other state-owned enterprises formed from the New Zealand Post Office: the erstwhile monopoly telephone operator , and a savings recognises Māori place-names in postal addresses. Dealings with government agencies may be conducted in Māori, but in practice this almost always requires interpreters Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages. The process is described by both the words interpreting and interpretation, 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, 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. It usually involves notification , consultation (a two-way flow of information and.

An interpreter is on hand at sessions of Parliament The Parliament of New Zealand consists of the Queen of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives and, until 1951, the New Zealand Legislative Council. The House of Representatives is often referred to as "Parliament", in case a Member wishes to speak in Māori. In 2008, Opposition parties held a filibuster A filibuster is a type of parliamentary procedure. Specifically, it is a form of obstruction in a legislature or other decision-making body whereby a lone member can elect to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a proposal against a local government Bill, and those who could recorded their voice votes in Māori, all faithfully interpreted.[citation needed]

A 1994 ruling by the Privy Council A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation on how to exercise their executive authority, 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[3] in the United Kingdom held the New Zealand Government responsible under the 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 northern North Island of New Zealand. The Treaty established a British governor in New Zealand, recognised Māori ownership of their lands and other properties, and gave Māori the rights of British (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 Land Information New Zealand is a New Zealand government agency. The current Chief Executive is Colin MacDonald. The current Minister of Land Information is Maurice Williamson 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 A geographic information system , or geographical information system, is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to location. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography and database technology. GIS systems are used in cartography, remote sensing, land surveying, utility management, systems) that could not handle macrons[4].

History

Detail from the carved ridgepole of a house

According to legend, Māori came to New Zealand from the mythical Hawaiki The Māori name Hawaiki refers to the mythical land to which some Polynesian cultures trace their origins. It may also refer to an underworld in many Māori stories, and in Mangaia in the Cook Islands. Tregear records that the Cook Islands Maori word Avaiki means "underworld". Buse however (1996: 90) in his dictionary Cook Islands Maori. Current anthropological thinking places their origin in tropical Eastern Polynesia Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The 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 canoes Waka are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes (waka tīwai) used for fishing and river travel, to large decorated war canoes (waka taua) up to 40 metres (130 ft) long. In recent years, large double-hulled canoes of considerable size have been constructed for oceanic voyaging to other parts of the[5] — possibly double-hulled and probably sail-rigged. These settlers probably arrived by about AD 1280 (see Māori origins The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand (Aotearoa). They arrived from East Polynesia in several waves at some time before the year 1300, settled and developed a distinct culture. Their language is very closely related to Cook Islands Māori and Tahitian). 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 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 in the shadow of the English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of spoken by settlers, missionaries, gold seekers, and traders from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. 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 (possibly at the request of Māori leaders Leadership is stated 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." Definitions more inclusive of followers have also emerged. Alan Keith stated that, "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something, who appreciated the value to their young people of fluent English[6] — see Native Schools). Increasing numbers of Māori people The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand (Aotearoa). They arrived from East Polynesia in several waves at some time before the year 1300, settled and developed a distinct culture. Their language is very closely related to Cook Islands Māori and Tahitian learned English.

Until World War II Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland · (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 The Parliament of New Zealand consists of the Queen of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives and, until 1951, the New Zealand Legislative Council. The House of Representatives is often referred to as "Parliament" 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 leaders Leadership is stated 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." Definitions more inclusive of followers have also emerged. Alan Keith stated that, "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something 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 the later 1980s the founding of the Kura Kaupapa Māori, a primary-school programme in Māori.

Linguistic classification

The major subgroups of East Polynesian

Comparative linguists Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness classify Māori as a Polynesian language 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. There is an estimation of almost 5 million Polynesians in the world; specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language belonging to the Tahitic subgroup, which includes Rarotongan, spoken in the southern Cook Islands The Cook Islands /ˈkʊk ˈaɪləndz/ (Cook Islands Māori: Kūki 'Āirani) is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand. The fifteen small islands in this South Pacific Ocean country have a total land area of 240 square kilometres (92.7 sq mi), but the Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1.8, and Tahitian Tahitian, a Tahitic language, spoken by Tahitians, is one of the two official languages of French Polynesia[citation needed] . It is an Eastern Polynesian language closely related to Rarotongan, New Zealand Māori, and Hawaiian, spoken in Tahiti Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. The island has a population of 178,133 according to an August 2007 census. This makes it the most populous island of French Polynesia, accounting for 68.6% of the total population. The capital, and the 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; however, Cook states in his journal that he called the. Other major Eastern Polynesian languages include Hawaiian The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaiʻi, 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. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840, Marquesan (languages in the Marquesic subgroup), and the Rapa Nui language Rapa Nui is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island of Easter Island Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile annexed in 1888, Easter Island is widely famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai (pronounced /ˈmoʊ.aɪ/), created by the early Rapanui people. It is a World Heritage[7][8][9] While the preceding are all distinct languages, they remain similar enough that Tupaia, a Tahitian travelling with Captain James Cook Captain James Cook FRS RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as in 1769-1770, communicated effectively with Māori. Speakers of modern Māori generally report that they find the languages of the Cook Islands The Cook Islands /ˈkʊk ˈaɪləndz/ (Cook Islands Māori: Kūki 'Āirani) is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand. The fifteen small islands in this South Pacific Ocean country have a total land area of 240 square kilometres (92.7 sq mi), but the Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1.8, including Rarotongan, the easiest other Polynesian languages to understand and converse in. See also Austronesian languages The branches of the Oceanic languages: Admiralties and Yapese St Matthias Western Oceanic & Meso-Melanesian Temotu Southeast Solomons Southern Oceanic Micronesian Fijian-Polynesian The black ovals at the northwestern limit of Micronesian are the Sunda-Sulawesi languages Palauan and Chamorro. The black circles in with the green are offshore.

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 50,000.[10] According to the 2006 census, 131,613 Māori (23.7%) "could [at least] hold a conversation about everyday things in te reo Māori".[10] 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 still[update] is a community language in some predominantly-Māori settlements in the Northland, Urewera Te Urewera, often known as The Ureweras, 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 spiritual home of the Tuhoe, one of the most independent-minded and prominent Māori iwi and 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 Māori-immersion kindergartens throughout New Zealand use Māori exclusively. Increasing numbers of Māori raise their children bilingually[citation needed]

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 New Zealand English is the form of the English language used in New Zealand 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 For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of the roughly 250 language groups. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north and discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by the British 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.[11]

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. [12] Attempts to write Māori words using the Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was borrowed and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome, whose alphabet was then adapted and further modified by the ancient began with Captain James Cook and other early explorers, with varying degrees of success. From 1814, missionaries tried to capture 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 The University of Cambridge is the second oldest university in England and the fourth oldest in Europe. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge), 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 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 A macron, from the Greek μακρόv , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel (and, more rarely, under or above a consonant). It was originally used to mark a long syllable in Græco-Roman metrics, but now also indicates that the vowel is long. (This is the opposite of a breve ˘, used to indicate originally a short syllable has become the generally accepted device for marking long vowels (hāngi), but at times the device of double vowel letters was 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.

Resolution of the problem of spelling long vowels

The alphabet devised at Cambridge University was deficient in that it did not mark vowel length. The follow examples 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 the doubling of letters. Sir Apirana Ngata's Maori Grammar and Conversation (7th printing 1953) uses macrons, but only inconsistently. 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. But the use of macrons was promoted by other universities and eventually by the Māori Language Commission, established by the Māori Language Act 1987 as the authority for Māori spelling and orthography.

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.[13]

Vowel length is phonemic; but four of the five long vowels occur in only a handful of word roots, the exception being /ā/.[14] 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 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.[15]

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 (pronounced) as IPA [ʉ].

Front Central Back
Close i u [ʉ]
Open-Mid e [ɛ] o [ɔ]
Open a

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Māori are listed in the following table. Seven of the ten Māori consonant letters 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 /r/ is a tap, identical or very similar to the /r/ in Spanish and 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").

Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal
Nonaspirated Plosive p t k
Voiceless Fricative wh [f, ɸ] h
Nasal m n ng [ŋ]
Tap r [ɾ]
Semivowel w

The pronunciation of /wh/ is extremely variable,[16] 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.

Syllables

Syllables 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".[17]

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 scanty 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.)

Dialects

Biggs proposed that historically there were two major dialect groups, North Island and South Island. South Island Māori is extinct[18] 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.[19]

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 dialects other than their own.

There is no significant variation in grammar between dialects.[20] 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 Whanganui 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.

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 Cook. 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.

Grammar and syntax

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 numbers 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 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:

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 calendars.

Day Transliteration Official
Monday Mane Rāhina
Tuesday Tūrei Rātū
Wednesday Wenerei Rāapa
Thursday Tāite Rāpare
Friday Paraire Rāmere
Saturday Rāhoroi/Hāterei Rāhoroi
Sunday Rātapu/Wiki Rātapu
Month Transliteration Official
January Hānuere Kohi-tātea
February Pēpuere Hui-tanguru
March Māehe Poutū-te-rangi
April Āperira Paenga-whāwhā
May Mei Haratua
June Hune Pipiri
July Hūrae Hōngongoi
August Ākuhata Here-turi-kōkā
September Hepetema Mahuru
October Oketopa Whiringa-ā-nuku
November Noema Whiringa-ā-rangi
December Tīhema Hakihea

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Statistics New Zealand:Language spoken (total responses) for the 1996-2006 censuses (Table 16).
  2. ^ "NZ Sign Language to be third official language". New Zealand Government. http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/nz+sign+language+be+third+official+language. Retrieved 2009-12-04.
  3. ^ New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney-General [1994] 1 NZLR 513
  4. ^ "New Zealand Gazetteer of Official Geographic Names". Land Information New Zealand. http://www.linz.govt.nz/placenames/find-names/nz-gazetteer-official-names/index.aspx.
  5. ^ K. R. Howe. 'Ideas of Māori origins - 1920s–2000: new understanding', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 4-Mar-09. URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ideas-of-maori-origins/5
  6. ^ "Toi te kupu, Toi te whenua, Toi te mana 1840 - 1900". Archives New Zealand. http://www.archives.govt.nz/exhibitions/pastexhibitions/tereo/1840_eng.php. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
  7. ^ Biggs, Bruce (1994). "Does Māori have a closest relative?" In Sutton (Ed.)(1994), pp. 96-105
  8. ^ Clark, Ross (1994). "Moriori and Māori: The Linguistic Evidence". In Sutton (Ed.)(1994), pp. 123-135.
  9. ^ Harlow, Ray (1994). "Māori Dialectology and the Settlement of New Zealand". In Sutton (Ed.)(1994), pp. 106-122.
  10. ^ a b QuickStats About Māori, Statistics New Zealand, 2006, http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2006CensusHomePage/QuickStats/quickstats-about-a-subject/maori.aspx, retrieved 2007-11-14 (revised 2007)
  11. ^ "Languages Spoken at Home" (pdf), Australia: 2001 and 1996 Census, http://www.omi.wa.gov.au/WAPeople%5CSect1%5CTable%201p04%20Aust.pdf, retrieved 2007-11-14
  12. ^ 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. Various methods are used to indicate glottal stops when writing the Wanganui dialect.
  13. ^ Bauer 1993: 537. Bauer mentions that Biggs 1961 announced a similar finding.
  14. ^ Bauer 1997: 536. Bauer even raised the possibility of analysing Māori as really having six vowel phonemes, /a, ā, e, i, o, u/.
  15. ^ Harlow 1996: 1; Bauer 1997: 534
  16. ^ Bauer 1997: 532 lists seven allophones (variant pronunciations).
  17. ^ A. H. McLintock (editor) (1966). "'MAORI LANGUAGE - Pronunciation'". Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966). http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/M/MaoriLanguage/Pronunciation/en.
  18. ^ Biggs 1988: 65
  19. ^ Bauer 1997: xxvi
  20. ^ "Most of the tribal variation in grammar is a matter of preferences: speakers of one area might prefer one grammatical form to another, but are likely on occasion to use the non-preferred form, and at least to recognise and understand it." Bauer 1993: xxi-xxii

References

External links

Māori language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Zealand topics
History Timeline · Treaty of Waitangi · Land Wars · Military history · Women's suffrage · New Zealand and Antarctica · Independence
People Māori · Pākehā / NZ European · Immigration · Demographics · Lists of New Zealanders
Geography Time zones · National Parks · Marine reserves · Islands · Lakes · Rivers · Caves · Cities · Towns · Biodiversity
Politics Law · Constitution · Queen · Parliament · Prime Minister · Political parties · Elections · Supreme Court · Foreign relations · Immigration
Economy Transport · Rogernomics · Tourism · Companies · Communications · Energy
Culture Māori culture · Māori language · NZ English · Art · Cinema · Literature · Music · Education · Sport · Public holidays · Religion · Media
Main cities Wellington (capital) · Auckland (largest) · Christchurch · Hamilton · Tauranga · Dunedin · Napier-Hastings · Palmerston North
Other topics

Honours system · Kiwi (people) · Aotearoa · Prostitution

Categories: Languages of New Zealand | Māori language | Tahitic languages

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Mon Jul 26 20:06:51 2010. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Māori Language' Blogs
Maori Language | Native Art World
nativeart-world.com
Maori Language | Native Art World

admin

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:52:46 GM

Language. is the basis of that vital section of the arts which includes singing and oratory, and should be considered prior to a study of these two and of the.

Google Blogs Search: Māori language,
Mon Jul 26 20:06:59 2010
[Hide]▲