HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

MAORI LANGUAGE

Decline and revival

In the last 200 years the history of the Mori language (te reo Mori)
has been one of ups and downs. At the beginning of the 19th century it was
the predominant language spoken in Aotearoa/New Zealand. As more
English speakers arrived in New Zealand, the Mori language was increasingly
confined to Mori communities. By the mid-20th century there were concerns that
the language was dying out.

Major initiatives launched from the 1980s have brought about a revival of te
reo. In the early 21st century, more than 130,000 people of Mori ethnicity could
speak and understand te reo, one of the three official languages of New Zealand
(the others are English and New Zealand Sign Language).

One land, many dialects

The Mori language evolved in Aotearoa, original name of New Zealand,

over several hundred years. There were regional variations that probably
widened because local populations were relatively isolated. These variations had
their origins in the fact that the ancestors of modern Mori came by canoe from
different villages and islands in eastern Polynesia. Mori had no written
language, but the symbolic meanings embodied in carving, knots and weaving
were widely understood.

Mori: a common means of communication

For the first half-century or so of European settlement, the Mori language

was a common way of communicating. Early settlers were dependent on Mori
for many things and had to learn to speak the language if they wished to trade
efficiently.

As more settlers arrived, the need for written communication in Mori grew.
Missionaries made the first attempts to write down the Mori language as early
as 1814. Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University worked with the chief
Hongi Hika and his junior relative Waikato to systematize the written language in
1820. Literacy and expanded numeracy were two exciting new concepts that
Mori took up enthusiastically. Missionaries of the 1820s reported how Mori all
over the country taught each other to read and write, using materials such as
charcoal and leaves, carved wood or the cured skins of introduced animals when
there was no paper available.

Up to the 1870s, and in some cases for several decades more, it was not
unusual for government officials, missionaries and other prominent Pkeh
(European New Zealanders) to speak Mori. Their children often grew up with
Mori children, and these sons and daughters of the early missionaries and
officials were among the most fluent European speakers and writers of Mori.
Particularly in rural areas, interaction between Mori and Pkeh was constant.

Krero Pkeh

Pkeh were in the majority by the early 1860s and English became the
dominant language of New Zealand. Increasingly, te reo was confined to Mori
communities that lived separately from the Pkeh majority.

The Mori language was not understood as an essential expression and

envelope of Mori culture, important for Mori in maintaining their pride and
identity as a people. Mori was now officially discouraged, and many Mori
themselves questioned its relevance in a Pkeh-dominated world where the
most important value seemed to be to get ahead as an individual.

The Mori language was suppressed in schools, either formally or informally,

so that Mori youngsters would assimilate with the wider community. Some older
Mori still recall punishments for speaking their language. In the mid-1980s Sir
James Henare remembered many years earlier being sent into the bush to cut a
piece of pirita (supplejack vine) with which he was struck for speaking te reo in
the school grounds. One teacher told him that English is the bread-and-butter
language, and if you want to earn your bread and butter you must speak English.

By the 1920s only a few private schools still taught Mori grammar. Many

Mori parents encouraged their children to learn English and even to turn away
from other aspects of Mori custom. Increasing numbers of Mori people learnt
English because they needed it in the workplace or on the sports field. Korero
Pkeh (Speak English) was seen as essential for Mori people.

A language lives

Despite the emphasis on speaking English, the Mori language survived.

Until the Second World War most Mori spoke te reo as their first language. They
worshipped in Mori, and Mori was the language of the marae. More
importantly, it was the language of the home and parents could pass it on to their
children. Political meetings, such as those of the Kotahitanga parliament in the
1890s, were conducted in Mori; there were Mori newspapers; and literature
such as Apirana Ngatas waiata collection, Nga moteatea, was published in Mori
with English translations.

The language that Mori spoke was undergoing change. All living languages
are influenced by the other languages their speakers hear. English became the
major source of borrowed words, which were altered by Mori usage to fit
euphonically and grammatically.

Loan words such as teihana (station) and hiho (horse) are called
transliterations, Some transliterations were unnecessary. Mori had perfectly
good names for places like Napier (Ahuriri), but sometimes transliterations of the
European names, such as Nepia (Napier) and Karauripe (Cloudy Bay), were
used. The English language in New Zealand was also changing and borrowing
words from Mori or Polynesian languages, such as taboo (tapu), kit (kete) and
Kiwi (a New Zealander).
The lure of the city

The Second World War brought about momentous changes for Mori
society. With plenty of work available in towns and cities, Mori moved into urban
areas in greater numbers. Before the war, about 75% of Mori lived in rural
areas. Two decades later, approximately 60% lived in urban centres.

English was the language of urban New Zealand at work, in school and in
leisure activities. Mori children went to city schools where Mori was unheard of
in teaching programs. Enforced contact between large numbers of Mori and
Pkeh caused much strain and stress, and te reo was one of the things to
suffer.

The number of Mori speakers began to decline rapidly. By the 1980s less
than 20% of Mori knew enough te reo to be regarded as native speakers. Even
for those people, Mori was ceasing to be the language of everyday use in the
home. Some urbanized Mori people became divorced from their language and
culture. Others maintained contact with their original communities, returning for
important hui (meetings) and tangihanga (funerals), or allowing the kaumtua at
home to adopt or care for their children.

Seeds of change

From the 1970s many Mori people reasserted their identity as Mori. An
emphasis on the language as an integral part of Mori culture was central to this
identity. Mori leaders were increasingly recognising the dangers of the loss of
Mori language. New groups emerged and made a commitment to strengthening
Mori culture and the language. One of these urban-based groups, Ng Tamatoa
(The Young Warriors) petitioned Parliament to promote the language. Mori
language day eventually became Mori language week in 1975. Three years
later, New Zealands first officially bilingual school opened at Rtoki in the
Urewera, and the first Mori-owned Mori-language radio station (Te Reo-oPneke) went on air in 1983.

Major Mori-language recovery programmes began in the 1980s. Many were

targeted at young people and the education system. The khanga reo
movement, which immersed Mori pre-schoolers in the Mori language, began in
1982, when the first khanga reo opened in Lower Hutt. Other programmes
followed, such as kura kaupapa, a system of primary schooling in a Morilanguage environment.

Relationship to other Austronesian languages

Mori is closely related to the language spoken in the Cook Islands (known as
Cook Islands Mori or Rarotongan. Many people use Rarotonga to refer to the
dialect spoken on the largest island in the Cook Islands group), Tahitian, and other
Polynesian languages spoken in Eastern Polynesia. Linguists agree that Mori is a
member of the East Polynesian branch of the Polynesian Language group. These
languages are a small group of the large and widespread Austronesian language
family.

Linguistic characteristics

The linguistic lineage for Moriori is: Austronesian, Polynesian, Nuclear

Polynesian, Eastern Polynesian, Central Polynesian, Tahitic. Moriori, therefore, is
closely related to the Maori language of New Zealand, Cook Island Maori and
Tahitian, among others, and more distantly to Rapanuian and Hawaiian. In fact,
there are some that regard Moriori as a dialect of Maori. On purely linguistic
grounds, however, it seems to be justified to classify Moriori as a separate
language.

Some of the characteristic features of Moriori in comparison with Maori are:

Numerous vowel permutations, such as Moriori a for Maori e (preposition), ka for
ki(preposition), eriki for ariki (lord, chief), reimata for roimata (tear), wihine for
wahine(woman) etc. Word-initial vowels before consonants are often dropped: na
for ena orha for aha. Unstressed word-final vowels following vowels are often
dropped and the preceding vowel is lengthened: ing for ingoa (name), r for reo
(voice, language). A vowel preceding another vowel can be dropped and the
remaining vowel is lengthened: k for koa, hre for haere, and so forth.