Maori language
| Maori (Te Reo Māori) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | New Zealand |
| Total speakers: | 50,000 |
| Ranking: | (Not in top 100) |
| Genetic classification: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central-Eastern Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Central-Eastern Oceanic Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East Fijian-Polynesian Polynesian Nuclear East Central Tahitic Maori |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | New Zealand |
| Regulated by: | Maori Language Commission |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | mi |
| ISO 639-2(B) | mao |
| ISO 639-2(T) | mri |
| SIL | MBF |
In the last 200 years the Maori language has had a very tumultuous history, going from the position of predominant language of New Zealand until into the 1860s, when it became a minority language in the shadow of the English brought by white settlers, missionaries, and traders. In the late 19th century, the English school system was introduced for all New Zealanders, and from the 1880s the use of Maori in school was forbidden. Increasing numbers of Maori people learnt English because it was required at school and because of the prestige and opportunity associated with the language. Until WWII, however, most Maori still spoke Maori as a native language. Worship was in Maori, it was the language of the home, political meetings were conducted in Maori, and some newspapers and some literature was published in Maori. As late as the 1930s, some Maori parliamentarians were disadvantaged because the Parliament's proceedings were by then carried on in English. In this period, the number of speakers of Maori began to decline rapidly until by the 1980s less than 20% of Maori spoke the language well enough to be considered native speakers. Even for many of those people, Maori was no longer the language of the home.
By the 1980s, Maori leaders began to recognize the dangers of the loss of their language and began to initiate Maori-language recovery programs such as the Kōhanga Reo movement, which immersed infants in Maori from infancy to school age. This was followed by the founding of the Kura Kaupapa, a primary school program in Maori.
History
Maori was probably brought to New Zealand by Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands who sailed over in canoes.Classification
The Maori language belongs to the Austronesian family of languages. It is most closely related to the Marquesan language of the Marquesas Islands.Geographic distribution
Maori is spoken almost exclusively in New Zealand by just over 50,000 people, nearly all of them ethnic Maori.Official status
Maori is one of two official languages of New Zealand, the other being English.Dialects
(List of dialects of the language. Major dialects with lots of information should probably have their own page.)Sounds
Description of the sound set of the language. Can include phoneme charts and example words for each phoneme like in French language. If there is significant discussion here, it is probably best to divide the section into vowels and consonants subsections.
Vowels
Vowel chart and discussion of vowels.
Consonants
Consonant chart and discussion of consonants.
Phonology
Discussion of some major phonological processes, such as important allophones or assimiliation rules.
Historical sound changes
Description of important sound changes in the history of the language. (Maybe this should go under history?Grammar
Description of the grammar of the language.Vocabulary
This section should contain a discussion of any special features of the vocabulary (or lexicon) of the language, like if it contains a large number of borrowed words or a different sets of words for different politeness levels, taboo groups, etc.Writing system
Although Maori once had a script similar to the Rongorongo script of Easter Island, their society was small and written language was not nessecary. Missionaries made their first attempts to write down the language in a Roman-based alphabet as early as 1814, and Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University worked with chief Hongi Hika and his junior relative Waikato to systematize the written language in 1820. Literacy was an exciting new concept that the Maori embraced enthusiastically, and missionaries reported in the 1820s that Maori all over the country taught each other to read and write, using sometimes quite innovative materials, such as leaves and charcoal, carved wood, and the cured skins of animals, when no paper available.Examples
Some short examples of the language in the writing system(s) used to write the language. You might also include sound samples of the language being spoken.External links