Hi everyone, my name is Julie, and today we are travelling to a magical land that inspired
so many filmmakers: Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud.
But who inhabited these lands way before the hobbits did?
Kia ora koutou and welcome to the Māori language.
Māori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa, or New Zealand, is today spoken by around
150,000 people which represents 3.7% of New Zealand’s population.
It is an official language of this country, alongside with English.
Māori is the language of first people on these islands, so we definitely have to look at
their history.
The history of Māori language and people starts in Taiwan, where the Proto-Austronesians originated.
It is considered, that one of the people groups who lived there and who apparently possessed
advanced sailing techniques, started sailing south in around 2500 BC, becoming Proto-Malayo-Polynesians.
These people explored a wast portion of land, from Madagascar to the West to Easter Island
to the East, from Hawaii to the North to New Zealand the South.
Māori belongs to the Tahitic languages of the Polynesian family on the Oceanic branch.
The settlers to New Zealand arrived in around beginning of first century AD, this is the
beginning of genesis of Māori as a distinct language, or as the Māori themselves call it
Te Reo, which translates simply as "the language".
The first brief contact between the Māori and Europeans happened in 1642 with a Dutch
expedition lead by Abel Tasman.
The contact was actually very brief and violent.
Tasman left without even going ashore and named the place that he had just discovered
the Murderers bay.
After this there were no news of Europeans venturing to these lands for a hundred years,
until the famous expedition by James Cook in 1769.
The British brought plenty of new fabulous stuff to Māori people: Christianity, weapons
and the writing system.
The Māori language didn’t have its own writing system, but it had and it still has
a very rich oral tradition, which includes the world famous “haka”, which is performed
on many occasions, especially in the beginning of a rugby match by the New Zealand’s rugby team.
Another very interesting form of art is "whakapapa" or genealogy.
Each Māori is able by reciting their whakapapa to retrace their ancestors back to the canoe
and the Pacific islands from which they came to New Zealand.
And even further, to the beginning of the universe itself.
So now it is about time to see how all of this oral art is actually pronounced.
The Māori today is written with the latin alphabet and even though there is no official
orthography norm, the most widely accepted is this one: 15 letters, 10 consonants,
2 of which are diphthongs, this one pronounced as "ng", like in the word “sing”, and
this one pronounced simply as "f".
There are also 5 vowels, each of them has a longer version, indicated by a macron.
Clearly we can see that there are not so many consonants.
But what... how did it happen?
Well actually if we trace back we can observe how progressively progressively they were
losing their consonants, as if they were sailing further and further and throwing these consonants
in the ocean.
Like that.
But why exactly the number of consonants was falling?
Well, some researchers say that it is the result of centuries-long isolation and lack
of contact with speakers of other languages.
As a contrast you can see the languages of Caucasus, where there are so many languages of
completely different language families, and in some of these languages the consonant number
breaks all the records.
Māori on the other hand has even more rules to limit their consonants.
Every syllable must have not more than one consonant and must not finish with one.
And that's how all of this sounds.
A very unique sound system which promises a very unique grammar.
Māori is a VSO language, the verb comes first.
So the phase “I see a kiwi”, "Ka kite au i te kiwi", literally translates as
"see I a kiwi”.
There is no gender and no number, or almost no number.
The are actually only these 8 words that possess both singular and plural versions.
For the pronouns on the other hand there is a singular, plural and dual number.
The nouns in Māori don't change forms, there are no cases or something like that.
And the same goes for verbs, there is no conjugation.
Which is a good news.
So to express the tense, the mood, the role of the word in a sentence, Māori extensively
uses particles.
These come in all shapes and colours.
So in our previous phrase with the kiwi, “Ka” is a present tense marker, “i” is the
object marker and “te” is the definite article.
The particles basically build the sentence and the meaning.
But how does Māori build the words?
Let’s see in the vocabulary.
Once a man named Tamatea went to a place and played a flute there.
And then this happened.
This is the longest place name on the planet which translates as “the place where Tamatea,
the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as 'landeater’,
played his flute to his loved one”.
Of course, Māori vocabulary has a lot of influx from English, but due to specific phonetic
system it is sometimes not that easy to recognise the English ancestor.
For example, this word "pēke" comes from the English "bank".
Ok, there is no sound “b” in Māori, so it is replaced by its voiceless version “p”.
The sounds “n” and “k” become one, and a vowel is added at the end, because
every syllable has to be open.
And we get "pēke".
Because why not.
Here are some other examples: "hōhi" comes from the word "church", "hōiho" – horse,
"tīhema" – December, and "whutupōro" – "football".
In English of course we use Māori words for describing local flora or fauna, for example
kiwi or kea, or for the aspects of Māori culture, for example haka.
But there is actually something that all of us inherited in some sort from the Māori
and Polynesian culture, especially if you're gaming.
This is the concept of Mana.
Mana in Māori culture is the spiritual life-force that permeates all the Universe.
It can be found in every individual and in every thing.
A person with a lot of Mana can exercise their power on other people or over the land.
It is a life-force, it is authority...
Oh, Gaby, I think you have a lot of mana.What do you think?
Lately actually Māori culture has experienced some sort of a Renaissance.
A lot of people, even if they're not of Māori descent, become interested and inspired by
this culture and language and mix it with some other forms of art, like for example this.
Yes yes, a metal band who are not of Māori descent but who sing in Māori and who promote
this language, and who actually became very popular.
And my personal opinion, Māori language sounds pretty good in metal, something about this
war spirit, you know, that goes together.
So as always, if you enjoyed the video, please like, subscribe, please comment – you know
what to do.
Special thanks and respect to my Patrons.
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time, bye bye!