Songs

In song the poetical genius of the Maori in language becomes evident. In modern times the language is regular and phrases are frequently broken up like an infant walking. In former times, especially in pre-European society, a wealth of meaning was clothed within a word or two as delectable as a proverb in its poetical form and in its musical sound. In ancient songs, particularly in karakia, there are a number of words which it is now quite impossible to elucidate. It must be supposed that these words were formerly current in the language.

To the modern mind there is a need for explanations of phrases, names, and archaic words. It has been found that there are some sacerdotal words in the songs, and some references to ancient Maori mythology. Many classical songs have been recorded in a number of books, with variations in the words from one book to another. This was inevitable, because they would go from lip to lip among the people throughout the land; on reaching some tribes a word or a name would be varied; and, because of the long period during which the circulation went on, some words were dropped or some were added. With a European as recorder, or a Maori not sufficiently literate, some of the words were wrongly spelt.

Today the number who sing the ancient Maori songs is gradually declining. Thus a new generation is growing up which, as a general rule, does not appreciate or value these ancestral treasures.

Dialectical Differences

Many interrelated factors, particularly the isolated location of certain groups and the general hostility that prevailed among many tribes, allowed for the development of dialectal differences during the centuries that followed the original settlement period. Generally there are two main dialects of contemporary Maori in New Zealand, namely, the western and eastern dialects. For historical reasons the Waikato-Ngapuhi dialect complex has come to be regarded as standard Maori. Briefly, some examples of dialectal differences in word usage are:

• kaika = home (South Island)

• kainga = home (most other tribes)

• tangata = man (most tribes)

• tanata = man (among Tuhoe)

• kei te pai = good (most tribes)

• kai te pai = good (among Tuhoe)

• karekau = in the negative (East Coast, Tuhoe)

• kao = in the negative (Taranaki)

Some Present-day Observations: Vocabulary

Reference has already been made to the increasing amount of transliteration in the Maori language and the replacing of genuine Maori sounds. This is a disturbing trend: for example, the use of the word whara for fellow instead of tangata (man), or manna (mother) instead of whaea. In personal names also can be found the use of Maori words that are actually transliteration:

• George = Hori

• John = Hoani or Hone

• Samuel = Hamiora

• Edward = Eruera

Another disturbing feature from the point of view of the purist is the varying degrees of originality of language among the tribes. This state of affairs has been in part due to the proximity of tribes to European urban areas; for example, the South Island, Wellington, and the Wairarapa were mainly European majority areas. Tribes such as Ngati Porou and Tuhoe are far superior as far as purity of the spoken language is concerned. In these areas also there is less usage of English words and mannerisms in speaking.

It is difficult to estimate the number who now speak fluent Maori, perhaps 70 per cent of the 170,000 Maori people. But the most disturbing feature is the fact that probably only 60 per cent of the young Maori population (probably less) under 20 years of age can and do speak Maori.

Teaching of the Maori Language

Since 1930 Maori studies, which include Maori history, arts, music, games, and other elements of Maori culture, have been growing in importance as an essential part of the curriculum in several subjects both for Maori and for European pupils. The Maori language itself is being taught today in nearly all Maori district high schools and in some State and private secondary schools; tuition is also available from the Correspondence School as far as staffing allows.

Maori is accepted as a subject for School Certificate and University Entrance, and Maori Studies (Stage I and II) is accepted as a subject for an arts degree in two universities. A 1965 estimate implies that over 2,000 pupils were being taught Maori. It would appear that since English is the language of the community at large, it is essential for the Maori primary pupils to master English as a basic subject. Maori can at best be but a second language for the vast majority.

by Ihakara Porutu Puketapu, B.A., Administration Officer, Department of Maori Affairs, Wellington.

• A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand, Kendall, T., and Lee, S. (1820)
• Grammar of the New Zealand Language, Maunsell, R. (1894)
• Complete Manual of Maori Grammar and Conversation, Ngata, A. T. (1948)
• Te Reo Maori – a Guide to the Study of the Maori Language, Smyth, P. (1943)
• The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, Tregear, E. (1891)
• A Dictionary of the Maori Language, Williams, H. W. (1957)
• First Lessons in Maori, Williams, H. W. (ed.) (1940)
• Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 64 (1955), “The Compound Possessives in Maori”, Biggs, B.

MAORI LANGUAGE

The Maori language of New Zealand is a Malayo-Polynesian language, a family of languages commonly divided into four sub-families, namely, Indonesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian. The New Zealand Maori language is part of the Polynesian sub-family of languages which form a very closely related group spoken for the most part within the Polynesian triangle. Thus Maori speech is a dialect of the language spoken throughout Polynesia and hence conveniently called the Polynesian language. The Polynesian group can be divided into east and west Polynesian sub-groups. New Zealand Maori is an eastern Polynesian language. The Maori dialects of Rarotonga, Tahiti, Hawaii, and all the islands of French Polynesia are very closely related to the Maori language spoken in New Zealand. There is rather less relation with the western Polynesian languages in Tonga, Samoa, and Niue, and still less to the Melanesian languages of Fiji.

New Zealand marks the southernmost limit of the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. Within the last thousand years, either through accidental voyages or by purposive migration using traditional navigational methods, Polynesian speakers fanned out from the Society and Cook groups to Hawaii in the north, to the eastern Archipelagoes of French Oceania, and to New Zealand in the south.

In respect to actual origin, in spite of comparisons that have been made between selected words from Polynesia and the speech of some American groups, the linguistic evidence suggests that the spread of the Polynesian language was from the direction of Asia and not America. The existence of different dialects in New Zealand points to the speculation that the different waves of early settlement were from different dialect areas in central Polynesia. Only intensive archaeological and linguistic research within Polynesia as a whole can determine this.

Creating a Written Language

The unwritten Polynesian language was reduced to writing by early missionaries in various island groups during the first half of the nineteenth century, with the Polynesian sounds represented by English letters. Earliest records of the Maori language can be found in the Journals of Cook, who visited New Zealand in 1769. But the first worth-while effort at a vocabulary and grammar was made and published in 1815 by the missionary Kendall. In 1820 the first step towards a dictionary of the Maori language was taken when the vocabulary of 100 pages was published by the Church Missionary Society with the Grammar. Probably the most important of the early works was the first edition of Williams's Maori Dictionary, published in 1844. The Williams family were to produce the best dictionary of any Polynesian or Melanesian language.

During the last half century there has occurred a significant advance in Maori linguistic study. Appropriate techniques have been developed, especially by Bruce Biggs, for establishing the significant sound contrasts in the Maori language. His system, which is based on an inventory of phonetic symbols, provides the most efficient writing system for the Maori language; it provides a means of indicating in writing every meaningful distinction in the sounds of the language, while at the same time ignoring the non-essential, because non-significant sound variations occur.

Parts of Speech

The Maori language is almost devoid of grammatical inflexions; most words may be used in more than one of the classes of parts of speech. As grammatical relations exist in Maori which have no exact counterpart in English grammar, terms have had to be adopted to express these relations.

Formal Structure

The Maori alphabet is very restricted, consisting of 15 letters: h, k, m, n, p, r, t, w, a, e, i, o, u, wh, ng. These letters can be classified into:

1. Eight consonants, h, k, m, n, p, r, t, w.

2. Two digraphs, wh, and ng, which may be included with the consonants.

3. Five vowels, a, e, i, o, u.

Pronunciation

It will be observed that the voiced consonants b, d, g, are wanting, also the voiced and voiceless pairs v, f and z, s, l. The only consonants are the voiceless p, t, k, the voiced and voiceless pair w, wh, the three nasals m, n, ng, the liquid r, and the aspirate h. The combinations of 10 consonants and five vowels form 55 open syllables, four of which, however, wo, wu, who, and whu, do not occur in any genuine Maori word.

The above table contains every letter and syllable used in Maori, but those syllables in italic are not found in genuine Maori words, although they are used in modern Maori introduced words, such as wuru (wool) and whuru (flu).

Vowels and Digraphs

To a student who speaks English only, the chief difficulty in pronunciation is the vowel sounds. Every vowel is pronounced and has a long and a short sound. Every syllable ends in a vowel. When two vowels occur together, each has its own sound, but there is no break as one merges into the other. Maori is a phonetic language, that is, a word is spelt according to the sound. To learn how to pronounce Maori, the sounds of the vowels, a, e, i, o, u, must be mastered.

Probably the best way to learn the vowel sounds is to use English examples:

The two difficult vowels are the e and the o.

Ng, as used in Maori to begin a syllable, is found difficult by most people and is pronounced as “ng” in “singer”. Another method is to pronounce the following three letters successively with the Maori vowel a, thus: ka, ga, nga, and practise till the letter is mastered.

Wh: There is some difference of opinion in respect to the correct pronunciation of the wh sound. It is not a compound of w and h, but represents the single voiceless consonant corresponding with w and is pronounced by emitting the breath sharply between the lips. Most tribes in New Zealand today assimilate the sound to that of f in English. From the phonetic spelling that was adopted by the early missionaries and settlers it would appear, however, that the use of the sound f for wh is a comparatively recent innovation. This is the view supported by Buck who contends that the use of the English f sound for wh, such as fafai for whawhai (to fight), is a post-European development adopted by some tribes. The student should practise the sound by pronouncing the wh as in the English word “when”; it is pronounced without letting the teeth touch the lower lip.

Accent: The disyllablic character of the language tends to cause in utterance a stress on the first syllable of each normal disyllablic element of a word. This stress gives way to a strong accent on the first syllable of a trisyllabic word, but survives as a secondary accent in polysyllabic words. The causative prefix whaka is unaccented and so also are the articles he, nga, te, the prepositions, the verbal particles, and the particle ko. The nominal particle, a, is ordinarily unaccented, but if used with one of the pronouns au, koe, ia, mea, wai, following a preposition, it carries the accent which disappears from the pronoun.

Vowels: Unmarked vowels may be assumed to be short, or comparatively so, though with some of the vowels three or even more grades of prolongation may be detected in speech. In some words the quantity of a vowel may vary in different districts, and strange vagaries are practised in this respect in songs.