Non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have a Māori proto-lexicon | Hacker News Reader

Non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have a Māori proto-lexicon

nature.com

32 pointsyorwba14 comments

Māori is on a really interesting trajectory in New Zealand. There was a huge decline in the 1900-1960 era, where kids would be punished at school for speaking Te Reo (the Māori language). It was headed towards being a dead language. There were then huge efforts by Iwi to promote and normalise Te Reo, through education and media such as Māori radio and TV.

Over the last decade or so, though, I feel there’s been a cultural shift in New Zealand where Te Reo is being embraced by New Zealanders in a new way: Māori words are being incorporated into our English dialect: “Do the Mahi (work)!” someone might say, or “let’s have a hui (get-together/meeting)”. It is also regularly spoken by news anchors on TV and Radio, e.g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_CpvfR2WkU

It feels new and globally unusual. It almost feels like the first inklings of a new language - an English/Māori creole of sorts?

It's interesting that "hui" has exactly the same meaning as in Chinese.

A quick search revealed this article:

https://fr-fr.facebook.com/NewZealandChinese/posts/when-hui-...

Any two languages will have some words of the same meaning that look alike, but this will be coincidence. Your linked article is utter pseudoscience.

Modern Mandarin is an artifact of the last millennium, Middle Chinese looked completely different. Similarly, Maori is known to go back to a Polynesian proto-language that also looked different. So, in neither language was the word "hui" just a few centuries ago.

Also, the two words are not actually pronounced alike.

That article seems to suggest that the resemblance is related to the Austronesian migration out of what is today China. But that happened thousands of years ago, so it's unlikely that any word remained exactly the same over such a long time.

Partially, the similarity is just orthographic: the pronunciation of Mandarin huì is written [xweɪ̯⁵¹] in the international phonetic alphabet, while the IPA transcription of Māori hui is apparently just [hui].

Additionally, both words derive from forms that were even less similar: the Mandarin word is reconstructed to come from Old Chinese /* m-kˤop-s/ or /* ɡoːbs/ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9C%83#Pronunciation_1 while the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary relates the Māori term to Proto-Oceanic * pui, referring to a cluster e.g. of fruit: https://www.trussel2.com/acd/acd-s_p.htm#4023

Does Maori have a script?

The was no writing system in pre-European NZ.

These days Māori is written using the Latin alphabet with macrons, or Māori braille (which I'm unfamiliar with).

got it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_language

[..]The Māori language did not have an indigenous writing system. Missionaries arriving from about 1814 learned to speak Māori, and introduced the Latin alphabet. In 1817, Tītore and his junior relative, Tui, sailed to England.[7] They visited Professor Samuel Lee at Cambridge University and assisted him in the preparation of a grammar and vocabulary of Māori. Thomas Kendall travelled to London with Hongi Hika and Waikato (a lower-ranking Ngāpuhi chief) in 1820, during which time further work was done with Professor Lee, who gave phonetic spellings to a written form of the language, which resulted in a definitive orthography based on Northern usage.[8] By 1830 the Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries had revised the orthography for writing the Māori language; for example, Kiddeekiddee became, as in the modern spelling, Kerikeri.[9] Māori distinguishes between long and short vowels; modern written texts usually mark the long vowels with a macron. Some older texts represent long vowels with double letters (for example: Maaori rather than Māori); for modern exceptions see § Long vowels below. [..]

Interestingly the written form uses a different pronunciation to the most common spoken form today, so e.g. “whanau” is pronounced “fa-nau” not “wha-nau”

Just scarification, tattoos and petroglyphs. Without paper, the next best thing is to write one's entire life story upon the skin, or carve a symbol into a rock. It's not phonetic, but it does preserve information for many years, so I think it counts.

Of course tattoo and scarification were only for people who had actually done anything worth remembering.

do they have meaning..like coming of age etc? or is it art?

Think of Maori tattoos like a collection of facts about the person bearing the tattoo. Scarification is the same idea, except those facts are REALLY important, too important for a tattoo which is less memorable than a scar. Examples of facts would be: family of origin, affilliated organization, past achievements, place of birth, occupation, etc. Markings would be born on the front of the body to make introductions very quick and easy: you can just look at a stranger and you already know a lot about him or her, and assuming you have good manners, you would also know what etiquette to observe when meeting for the first time.

I can see how it would have been useful in a small community. But I guess being here..I can’t help wondering..isn’t that a privacy/security risk?

It is a little dystopian isn't it? In European history tattoos specifically are associated with punishment, judgement and exploitation: Cain was "marked" and banished from eden, slaves and prisoners both past and present have born brands or tattoos which marked them as second-class citizens. In the United States, being marked by the government specifically is considered a sign of the apocalypse so there is a very strong fear about such things.

However this can have a positive effect in a different context. Maori don't come from a Christian background, so the act of marking people has a completely different meaning. If my life story is permanently written on my skin, that's a strong motivator to live well and do things I can be proud of. If my ancestry is part of my public identity, then I must also be excellent, so that my actions reflect well on my descendents and those descendents have a good role model to emulate in their lives. I think it encourages a strong sense of individual responsibility, a focus on supporting the community and multigenerational thinking.

I understand that. I am from the south of India and in the villages, women get the names of their clans and names of their husbands tattooed on their arms after they get married. There are tattoos for soldiers, for achievements and tattoos for shaming. South Indian original tribes probably have aboriginal roots than Polynesian but I suppose the intention was the same.

But everyone is somewhat ‘urbanized’ now and we don’t live in tribal societies anymore. That has its advantages but also makes those who follow older customs more vulnerable.

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