The English word Maori is a borrowing from the Māori language, where it is spelled Māori. In New Zealand, the Māori … See more

New Zealand has two de jure official languages: Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, whereas New Zealand English acts as a de facto official language. Te reo Māori gained its official status with the passing of t… See more

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 (see … See more

Comparative linguists classify Māori as a Polynesian language, specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language belonging to the Tahitic subgroup, which includes Cook Islands Māori, spoken in the southern Cook Islands, … See more

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 10,000 fluent adult speakers i… See more

The modern Māori alphabet has 15 letters, two of which are digraphs (character pairs). The five vowels have both short and long forms, with the long forms denoted by macrons marked above them.
The order o… See more

Māori has five phonemically distinct vowel articulations, and ten consonant phonemes.
Although it is commonly claimed that vowel realisations (pronunciations) in Māori show little variation, linguistic research has shown this … See more