Maori+Language

=**Maori languages**= = =

The Maori language is one of the three official languages in New Zealand, English and sign language are the others. New Zealand is the only place in the world that Maori is spoken.

The Maori language belongs to the Polynesian sub-family of languages, this helped Captain Cooks’ Tahitian interpreter Tupaia to translate on the initial voyage of discovering New Zealand. The early missionaries started to write the Maori language but they used English letters to represent the Maori sounds. More accurate English spellings have been made recently but aren’t commonly used because of political correctness. Their language has only fifteen letters-h, k, m, n, p, r, t, w, a, e, i, o, u, wh (pronounced ‘f’) and ng.

Maori became an official language in 1987. Queen Victoria promised in the 1840 treaty to protect their language and at the moment it is being taught at school. In 1940 the Maori people moved to the city and felt pressured to speak English, the language was nearly lost, as most children weren’t taught it. In 1800 the languae was forbidden in school but in World war two it was spoken freely. A recent government survey shows that about 130,000 people speak Maori, despite this it’s struggling not to be lost.