MAORI. The name of the indigenous people (tangata whenua) of New Zealand and their language. Maori is spoken by about one-third of the approximately 300,000 Maori population. With such other languages as HAWAIIAN, Samoan, and Tongan, it is a member of the Polynesian branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family.

Pronunciation

The Maori pronunciation of Maori has a long a /ˈmaːɔri/, a usage which is fairly common in NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH alongside the traditional Anglicized /ˈmaʊri/. No single DIALECT has emerged as the basis for a STANDARD form of Maori. Tribal variation in pronunciation is shown in such pairs as inanga/inaka (a kind of fish), mingimingi/mikimiki (an evergreen shrub), and the place-name Waitangi/Waitaki. In each of these cases, /ŋ/ is a North Island equivalent of a South Island /k/. In words conventionally spelt with wh (whare, kowhai), some tribes use a sound approximating to /f/, others a sound approximating to /hw/. Maori has the consonants /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, f, h, r, w/ and the five vowels /i, ɛ, a, ɔ, u/, which can be either long or short. It also permits a maximum of one consonant sound before any vowel. Consequently, LOANWORDS from English may undergo considerable change: sheep to hipi, Bible to paipera, London to Ranana. The written consonant cluster ng is pronounced /ŋ/, as in sing, whether initial or medial. Maori r in many words corresponds to Hawaiian and Samoan l: aroha, Hawaiian aloha love; whare, Samoan fale house.

Writing

The language was unwritten before the arrival in the early 19c of British missionaries, who, in creating a written form for the language, did not always successfully equate its phonemes with the nearest equivalents in English. A major feature of their work was the decision that vowel length in Maori did not need to be reflected in spelling (although DIACRITICAL MARKS have since been optional). Some present-day scholars of Maori have adopted a system of doubling long vowels: Maaori instead of Maori or Māori; kaakaa instead of kaka or kākā (parrot); kaakaapoo instead of kakapo or kākāpō. However, since most printing of the language shows the older conventions, it seems likely that the missionaries’ style will prevail.

Influence on English

All Maoris speak English, but few Pakehas (white New Zealanders) and a diminishing number of Maoris speak Maori with any fluency, although attempts are now being made to give greater prominence to Maori language and culture. From the beginning, European settlers adopted Maori names for physical features and tribal settlements, but such names came to be pronounced with varying degrees of adaptation. Thus, the place-name Paekakariki, pronounced /paɛˈkakariki/ by the Maoris, was Anglicized to /ˌpaɪkɒkəˈriːkiː/ and frequently reduced to the disyllabic /ˈpaɪkɒk/. The place-name Whangarei /ˈfaŋarɛi;/ was Anglicized to /ˈwɒŋəˈrei/. Most of the Maori names for the distinctive flora (kowhai, nikau, pohutukawa, rimu, totara) and fauna (kiwi, takahe, tuatara, weta) were also adopted and varyingly adapted into NZE. The issue of how far English-speakers should attempt to adopt native Maori pronunciations of such words has, for many years, been a major point of linguistic discussion in New Zealand. Broadcasting now attempts, not always successfully, to use a Maori pronunciation at all times.

Status

In the later 19c and early 20c, the use of Maori was officially discouraged in schools. Many Maoris concurred with this policy, seeing English as the language which was likely to give their children the greater advantage in later life. In more recent times, there has been a resurgence in the use of Maori as a marker of ethnic and cultural identity. Language nests or kohanga reo have been established for pre-school children, and many Maori people aim at bilingualism. Although Maori has now been recognized as an official language in the courts, it is still too early to say what effect this growing recognition of Maori will have in the long term.