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Measles, typhoid, scarlet fever, whooping cough and almost everything, except plague and sleeping sickness, have taken their toll of Maori dead". [63] A korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's first book was written by missionary Thomas Kendall in 1815, and is the first book written in the Māori language.
The Māori language, also known as te reo Māori (pronounced [ˈmaːoɾi, te ˈɾeo ˈmaːoɾi]) or simply Te Reo ("the language"), has the status of an official language. Linguists classify it within the Eastern Polynesian languages as being closely related to Cook Islands Māori , Tuamotuan and Tahitian .
Polynesians, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian Mā'ohi, Hawaiian Māoli, Marquesans, and New Zealand Māori, are a subset of the Austronesian peoples. They share the same origins as the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, and Madagascar. [13]
In Polynesian Folklore, Hawaiki (also rendered as ʻAvaiki in Cook Islands, Hawaiki in Māori, Savaiʻi in Samoan, Havaiʻi in Tahitian, Hawaiʻi in Hawaiian) is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. [1]
Māori writer Hare Hongi (Henry Stowell) used macrons in his Maori-English Tutor and Vade Mecum of 1911, [98] as does Sir Āpirana Ngata (albeit inconsistently) in his Maori Grammar and Conversation (7th printing 1953). Once the Māori language was taught in universities in the 1960s, vowel-length marking was made systematic.
Polynesian languages are all members of the family of Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the Austronesian language family. Polynesian languages show a considerable degree of similarity. The vowels are generally the same—/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, pronounced as in Italian, Spanish, and German—and the consonants are always followed by a vowel.
The discovery of new islands and island groups was by means of entire small villages called vanua or "banwa" setting sail on great single and double-hulled canoes. Archaeological evidence indicates that by about 1280 AD, these voyagers had settled the vast Polynesian triangle with its northern corner at Hawaii , the eastern corner at Rapa Nui ...
The Hawaiian language has about 2,000 native speakers, about 0.15% of the total population. [190] According to the United States Census, there were more than 24,000 total speakers of the language in Hawaii in 2006–2008. [191] Hawaiian is a Polynesian member of the Austronesian language family. [190]