Māori language
Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language and the language of the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand. The southernmost member of the Austronesian language family, it is related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian. The Māori Language Act 1987 gave the language recognition as one of New Zealand's official languages. There are regional dialects of the Māori language.
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 government-imposed educational policies; by the early 20th century its use was banned in school playgrounds and classrooms across the country. 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 2018 New Zealand census reported that about 190,000 people, or 4% of the population, could hold an everyday conversation in Māori., 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". As of 2023, around 7% of New Zealand primary and secondary school students are taught fully or partially in Māori, and another 24% learn Māori as an additional language.
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 Māori music#Mōteatea, Māori music, 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 , short for te reo Māori.The Māori-language spelling with a macron has become common in New Zealand English in recent years, particularly in Māori-specific cultural contexts, although the traditional macron-less English spelling is still sometimes seen in general media and government use.
The pronunciation in Māori and current standard New Zealand English is /ˈma:ɔri/, with the 'r' usually a flap. A more anglicised pronunciation is.
Official status
New Zealand has two de jure official languages: Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, whereas 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 held the Government responsible under the Treaty of Waitangi 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 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 that could not handle macrons.
Political dimensions
The official status of Māori, and especially its use in official names and titles, is a political issue in New Zealand. In 2022 a 70,000-strong petition from Te Pāti Māori went to Parliament calling for New Zealand to be officially renamed Aotearoa, and was accepted for debate by the Māori Affairs select committee. During New Zealand First's successful campaign to return to Parliament in 2023, party leader Winston Peters ridiculed the proposal as "ideological mumbo jumbo" and criticised the use of the name in government reports. Peters promised his party would remove Māori names from government departments, saying "Te Whatu Ora, excuse me, I don't want to speak the Māori language when I go to hospital." As part of its coalition agreement with New Zealand First, the National-led government agreed to ensure all public service departments had their primary name in English except for those specifically related to Māori.In 2025, Radio New Zealand reported that education minister Erica Stanford had decided the previous year to exclude most Māori words from the Education Ministry's "Ready to Read Phonics Plus" series. Stanford said that the decision only affected 12 books within the series and that 27 books with Māori words would be reprinted. The decision was described as "over-reach" by the New Zealand Principals' Federation and sharply criticised as an "act of racism" by writers and publishers.
History
Origins
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, 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 sister Polynesian languages adapting to New Zealand's unique geographical features and temperate climate. Six dialectal variations emerged among iwi due to further internal 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 used "mnemonic devices, repetitive patterns rhyme" 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
Missionaries learned to speak Māori, and introduced the Latin alphabet to Māori. The Church Mission Society, including Thomas Kendall; Māori, including Tītore and Hongi Hika; and Cambridge University's Samuel Lee, developed the written form of the language between 1817 and 1830. In 1833, while living in the Paihia mission-house of Anglican priest and the now head of the New Zealand CMS mission, Rev Henry Williams, missioner William Colenso published Māori translations including parts of books of the Bible, the first books printed in New Zealand. Colenso's 1837 Māori New Testament was the first indigenous-language translation of the Bible published in the southern hemisphere. Demand for the Māori New Testament, and for the Prayer Book that followed, grew exponentially, as did Christian Māori leadership and public Christian services, with 33,000 Māori soon attending regularly. Literacy and understanding the Bible increased Mana and social and economic benefits. 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.Suppression and decline
Efforts to culturally assimilate Māori into European society began in the 19th century. This included policies to educate Māori based on the English school system, with steps taken that increasingly promoted English as the sole language of use in schools. These adversely affected the use of the Maori language by Maori children. The Education Ordinance Act 1847 set English as the predominant language of schools. This was followed in 1880 by the Native Schools Code, which placed further restrictions on the use of Māori, establishing the expectation that teachers would have some knowledge of the language solely for the purpose of teaching English to younger pupils. Further restrictions on Māori followed, to the point that in the early twentieth century, children were forbidden to speak it in the classroom or playground, under penalty of 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.In many cases these policies were accepted or even encouraged by parents who wanted their children to succeed in the Pākehā world around them; however, it remained government policy to educate Māori in manual trades rather than academic professions until the mid-twentieth century. Proposals in 1930 to introduce Māori to the curriculum were blocked on the grounds that the purpose of education was to "lead the Māori lad to be a good farmer and the Māori girl to be a good farmer's wife".
Most Māori people continued to speak Māori as their first language until World War II. The number of speakers of Māori began to decline rapidly with the migration of Māori to urban areas after the war. 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.
In 1984, Naida Glavish, a tolls operator, was demoted for using the Māori greeting "kia ora" with customers. The "Kia Ora Incident" was the subject of public and political scrutiny before having her job reinstated by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, and became a major symbol of long-standing linguicism in New Zealand.