Maori

[ol bofosh]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

[Turtlehead]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

Maori to english, bad grammar.
English to maori, funny transliterated words.

A maori and some Europeans say, ride on a car, I presume this is influenced by the maori linguistic construction ...ma runga....
Many Maoris or Europeans use 'Where do you stay?' to mean 'Where do you live?' as noho is used in maori to mean where someone lives, its literal definition is 'to sit'.

This is only a few examples. North Island English is more strongly effected by Maori language than South Island English.

[Kuturere Reo]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

This gives some idea of the ongoing effects of English on Māori:
http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bi ... sequence=1. The language is in dire straits generally and it remains to be seen whether it will survive.

Apart from borrowed words, the effect of Māori on NZ English is minimal. Few NZE speakers would use 'stay' in the sense TH suggests.

[finlay]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

Maori to english, bad grammar.
English to maori, funny transliterated words.

A maori and some Europeans say, ride on a car, I presume this is influenced by the maori linguistic construction ...ma runga....
Many Maoris or Europeans use 'Where do you stay?' to mean 'Where do you live?'

That could equally be Scottish influence, since that's an incredibly common usage over here.

[Turtlehead]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

This gives some idea of the ongoing effects of English on Māori:
http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bi ... sequence=1. The language is in dire straits generally and it remains to be seen whether it will survive.

That is also true. Many Maori native speakers can't understand the Modern Maori taught speakers. This is also why I made an attempt at learning the language.

Apart from borrowed words, the effect of Māori on NZ English is minimal. Few NZE speakers would use 'stay' in the sense TH suggests.

That is quite true.

@Reo Would you like to do some lessons on Maori language too?

[Turtlehead]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

Maori to english, bad grammar.
English to maori, funny transliterated words.

A maori and some Europeans say, ride on a car, I presume this is influenced by the maori linguistic construction ...ma runga....
Many Maoris or Europeans use 'Where do you stay?' to mean 'Where do you live?'

That could equally be Scottish influence, since that's an incredibly common usage over here.

That is also probably too. But, that would be more a celtic influence on Maori culture and language.

[Kuturere Reo]

What are the effects of the English language on Maori?

And the effects of Maori on the English spoken in NZ?

Maori to english, bad grammar.
English to maori, funny transliterated words.

A maori and some Europeans say, ride on a car, I presume this is influenced by the maori linguistic construction ...ma runga....
Many Maoris or Europeans use 'Where do you stay?' to mean 'Where do you live?'

That could equally be Scottish influence, since that's an incredibly common usage over here.

That is also probably too. But, that would be more a celtic influence on Maori culture and language.

Influence from which Celtic language???? Scottish English???

[Whimemsz]

I GUESS he probably means Scottish Gaelic or something but......who knows

Either way it misses Finlay's point entirely

[Turtlehead]

...Scottish Gaelic...

genau

[Kuturere Reo]

...Scottish Gaelic...

genau

Epic fail

[Turtlehead]

...Scottish Gaelic...

genau

Epic fail

How so?

[Rodlox]

Turtlehead, please, just admit you're wrong. it costs you nothing, and may benefit you.

[Turtlehead]

Turtlehead, please, just admit you're wrong. it costs you nothing, and may benefit you.

Sounds like a deal

[Rodlox]

Turtlehead, please, just admit you're wrong. it costs you nothing, and may benefit you.

Sounds like a deal

*waits patiently for you*

[Chargone]

ehh, i get the distinct impression that interaction with the Maori language may be part of why NZ's vowels are quite how they are... plus a whole lot of names for various flora and fauna... don't have any data to say much else.

[Aurora Rossa]

I have a question related to Maori: how does one pronounce "Aotearoa"?

[Astraios]

[aoteaɾoa]

[Kuturere Reo]

ehh, i get the distinct impression that interaction with the Maori language may be part of why NZ's vowels are quite how they are... plus a whole lot of names for various flora and fauna... don't have any data to say much else.

Actually, no. NZ English vowels are only marginally different from Australian English - which Māori could not have influenced. It's more like Māori vowels are becoming more English-like among younger speakers. You are right about the flora and fauna vocab tho.

[Chargone]

ehh, i get the distinct impression that interaction with the Maori language may be part of why NZ's vowels are quite how they are... plus a whole lot of names for various flora and fauna... don't have any data to say much else.

Actually, no. NZ English vowels are only marginally different from Australian English - which Māori could not have influenced. It's more like Māori vowels are becoming more English-like among younger speakers. You are right about the flora and fauna vocab tho.

i've also noticed a distinct tendency for people i know to pluralise words ending in vowels with a null marker rather than an 's' .. though there's more to it than just 'ends in a vowel'. 'course, this is probably taken pretty directly from all the above mentioned flora and fauna pluralising that way. (oddly, i'd talk about 'a bunch of kia' 'several kia' but it'd be 'the kias were' ... so if the plural is indicated before i get to the noun itself, the s doesn't appear, but if it isn't it does so as to avoid confusion... or something. ) or i might be miss remembering and the odd bit is the 's' cropping up on plural nouns that shouldn't get it when there's no other obvious plural marker. the more i think about it, the more confused i get (yes, i know why that is )

anyway, might just be a highly localised thing ( i know i and my brothers and friends all have our own bits of weirdness to our speech patterns, some of them more common than others and some personalised nonsense that sort of entrenched itself. heh) for all i know. no idea how significant it is or isn't.

[Kuturere Reo]

Think you mean 'kea'. Well that is one possible effect - tho it's more common in politically correct written sources than in speech - using zero plural on Mãori-derived words. It's reinforced by the zero plurals in standard English for some animals, eg sheep, deer which seems to be spreading in NZE: orca rather than orcas is an example.

[Chargone]

Think you mean 'kea'. Well that is one possible effect - tho it's more common in politically correct written sources than in speech - using zero plural on Mãori-derived words. It's reinforced by the zero plurals in standard English for some animals, eg sheep, deer which seems to be spreading in NZE: orca rather than orcas is an example.

*facepalms* i have no idea why i spelled that word wrong. ... wait, no, i know. because it usually gets mispronounced and if the usually pronunciation were the correct one that Would be the spelling... but it's not. gah.

also, fear my ability to have two different thoughts mixed together inconveniently. fear it i say!

[marconatrix]

Don't the Maori have legends about pre-existing people they found when they arrived? Is there anything to suggest they could be more than 'fairy-stories'? They do have legends about the first settlers, IIRC??
Which language (outside NZ) is closest to Maori, and how different is it?

Is there anything weird about Maori compared to closely related languages that might suggest a substratum influence?

[Kuturere Reo]

Don't the Maori have legends about pre-existing people they found when they arrived? Is there anything to suggest they could be more than 'fairy-stories'? They do have legends about the first settlers, IIRC??
Which language (outside NZ) is closest to Maori, and how different is it?

Is there anything weird about Maori compared to closely related languages that might suggest a substratum influence?

Yes. Some are obviously fairy stories. Others are, when you read the originals, talking about other Māori triibes - ie it's a situation of internal migration within NZ. It's a fairly big country and each tribal area has its own traditions. European researchers in the 19th century wrote a lot of crap which still gets repeated today even tho long discredited.

Māori is an East Polynesian language of the Tahitic subgroup which includes Tahitian, Tuamotu, Rarotongan and all the languages/dialects of the Cook Islands except Pukapuka. Linguists cannot tell which of those languages it is closest to, bearing in mind that lots of Tahitian vocab has been replaced because of word taboos. Captn Cook brought a Tahitian with him in late 1700s who had no trouble conversing with Māori and acted as interpreter.
Subjectively tho the closest is said to be the Manihiki dialect of the Cook Islands. To my ears Rarotongan sounds like an odd dialect of NZ Māori rather than a different language. I guess the order of similarity would be something like norwegian and swedish. Grammar much the same.

More distantly within E Polynesian I have heard Hawaiian spoken - its harder but you can get the gist. But you have to work at it and you miss about half of it because of all the consonantal changes.

Edits: There is nothing weird about Māori to suggest any substratum influence.

[Kuturere Reo]

Ka korero koe i te reo Maori?

Could you translate, gloss and transcribe the pronunciation of that?

Bonus: if you really can, also show the same sentence in [an]other polynesian language[s], and if not all words are the same, still show possible cognates.

Rather than show that particular sentence in another Polynesian language, I was thinking I could take some of the example sentences from the Wikipedia articles on a few of the Polynesian languages, and show what those sentences would be in Maori. That way at least I am not making up the sentences in languages I don't speak.

Most of the Wikipedia articles on Polynesian languages are crappy tho.

Re transcribing the pronunciation, Polynesian pronunciation is very simple usually. The one thing that Maori has innovated is stressing the first syllable rather than the second in words of more than two syllables (altho it uses the old stress pattern on the last word in the peninultimate phrase of a multi-phrase sentence), unless there are long vowels which attract stress.

[Kuturere Reo]

Let's start with the Eastern Polynesian language most distantly related to Maori:

Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapa_Nui_language

There are only a couple of usable sentence examples given in the article, here's the first. The grammatical structures seem much the same, but I won't comment on the analysis given in the Wiki article:

Code: Select all

Rapa Nui is a VSO (verb–subject–object) language.[10] Except where verbs of sensing are used, the object of a verb is marked by the relational particle i.

    e.g.: He hakahu koe i te rama
        "You light the torch"

Where a verb of sensing is used, the subject is marked by the agentive particle e.

    e.g.: He tike'a e au te poki 

        "I can see the child"

EAS: He hakahu koe i te rama
MAO: Ka whakakā koe i te rama
"You light the torch"

ka whaka.kā koe i te rama
incep causative.LIGHT you.sing accusative def.sing TORCH

Cognates (for words that aren't identical):
EAS "hakahu" and MAO "whakakā" both begin with reflexes of PPN causative prefix *faka-

EAS:He tike'a e au te poki
MAO:Ka kitea e au te tamaiti
"I (can) see the child"

ka kite.a e au te tamaiti
incep SEE.passive agent 1sing def.sing CHILD

Cognates (for words that aren't identical):
The EAS form "tike'a" and the MAO "kitea" are both reflexes of PPN *kiteqa (see/find) (where q = glottal stop).
EAS "poki" child has cognates in the Marquesic languages Hawaiian and Marquesan, but not apparently in other EP languages. It may be related to Maori potiki, youngest child, which has cognates in a wide range of Polynesian languages.

In Maori this structure is called the passive and is not restricted to verbs of sensing. So I wonder if the Wiki article is right about EAS here. Maori uses the passive a lot.

In the indicative voice in MAO it would be

Ka kite au i te tamaiti
inceptive see I accusative the child
"I (can) see the child".

In Maori the word "he", which appears to be a TAM in EAS, is the indefinite article in MAO. You could get close to the EAS usage though, if you use this kind of construction, which would be quite marked or poetical:

*He kitenga tāku i te tamaiti
indef finding mine accusative def.sing child

"Mine was in finding the child" where kitenga is a nominalisation of the verb kite, see/find, and tāku is a 1st person possessive. I could see that sort of thing developing 'he' into a TAM once you leave the nominalising -nga off the verb.


Second example from the Wikipedia article:

Code: Select all

Ko and ka are exclamatory indicators.[13]

    Ko suggests a personal reaction:

        Ko te aroha (Poor thing!)

    Ka suggests judgement on external events:

        Ka ha'aki'aki (Tell the whole story!)

EAS: Ko te aroha
MAO: Ko te aroha or Te aroha hoki
"Poor thing" / "How sad" / "I feel sorry (for that person)"

ko te aroha / te aroha hoki
topic def.sing LOVE / def LOVE also

EAS: Ka ha'aki'aki "tell the whole story"
MAO: Whākina! "Confess, reveal it"

The EAS form looks like TAM verb+redup to me, whereas MAO:

whāki.na
CONFESS.passive

Cognates: Here the EAS form ha'aki'aki is a reduplication form of an original *faqaki (see http://pollex.org.nz/entry/faqaki/), from which Maori whāki also derives.
I have my doubts about these so-called EAS "excamatory indicators".

Edited - for typo - I called "te" indef instead of definite