Talk:Māori language

Page Preview Image

I don't know enough about Wikipedia to be able to try and fix this myself, but surely the preview image for this page on other pages shouldn't be the Israeli flag. Considering the image doesn't appear in the article itself it is presumably vandalism, unfortunately I don't know enough about Wikipedia editing to be able to find and make the change myself. Weirdguyz (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

It is indeed vandalism, it's been fixed and the preview will be fixed once the cache expires. Nardog (talk) 18:56, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Maori-only speakers

The page currently claims: "Only around 9,000 people speak only in Māori." The citation for this claim is Albury, Nathan John (2 April 2016). "An old problem with new directions: Māori language revitalisation and the policy ideas of youth". Current Issues in Language Planning. 17 (2): 161–178.

I have just obtained the full text of this paper and read it thoroughly, and cannot find anything like this claim anywhere in the reference. Based on that I propose removing the entire sentence unless someone can provide a better source. --131.203.73.86 (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The claim in question, "Only around 9,000 people speak only in Māori", is under the 'Geographic distribution' headline. Also under that headline, the article says "1.4 per cent of the total Māori population, spoke the Māori language only" citing the 2013 census. That seems about consistent with the first quote, but I can't find that fact in the census source either. E James Bowman (talk) 07:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Good to see sources being checked. IMO a surprisingly large percentage of sourced information on wikipedia is wrong because it is not backed by the source provided. The reason why that happens would make for an interesting open discussion at some future time and place. I have no objection to removing the sentence. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Māori-Moriori

In the info box under language family is an entry between Tahitic and Māori for Māori-Moriori. I can find no mention of "Māori-Moriori" as a defined name in literature and wonder why exactly it is here and what it is adding. I can understand that this maybe attempting to describe the language that existed before the isolation of Moriori on the Chatham Islands. However the way it looks at the moment can suggest at a casual glance that Moriori existed before Māori rather than being a development from. I think it would be better to remove this entry entirely or if there is a defined split between early and late (my names) Māori and it is useful to make such a distintion an established cited name should be used. Maungapohatu (talk) 23:14, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

An additional note: I have removed Māori-Moriori and replaced it with Māori on the Moriori language page as this was even more bizarre there. Maungapohatu (talk) 23:34, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure I remember explaining this more than once before, possibly in edit summaries.

Māori and Moriori are more closely related to each other than either one is to Rarotongan or Tahitian or other Tahitic languages. They split apart from each other after splitting off from the Tahitic proto-language. They form a subgroup of the Tahitic language family. Since there's no widely understood name for this subgroup, it's referred to simply by enumerating the languages within it, which are Māori and Moriori. Hence, "Māori-Moriori".

The Moriori language is not a development from te Reo Māori as it exists today; it is a development from the language spoken in Aotearoa five hundred years ago. Modern Reo Māori is equally a development from the language spoken in Aotearoa five hundred years ago. The fact that only one of those two groups of people migrated at that time does not, in even the slightest degree, imply that the language of the stayers has remained the same as the ancestral language while the language of the migrants has drifted away from it. Both modern languages will have drifted about equally from the ancestral language.

(By way of comparison, American English preserves just as many old features that have been lost in British English as vice versa.)

Since we have to give peoples labels in order to talk about them at all, we use the word "Māori" for the indigenous people of Aotearoa starting from the time they arrived here, which includes at least a large fraction of the ancestors of the Moriori people as well. But labels are dangerous things. We must not allow them to mislead us into thinking that languages and cultures are rigid monoliths that change only at the points where we change the labels.

—VeryRarelyStable 03:24, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there any term used in the literature for the proto-language common to both modern Te reo Māori and ta rē Moriori? Like how modern English and Scots both descend from Old English, as an example? Proto-Māori maybe? I suppose it could be a bit niche and linguists might not have settled on anything yet 161.29.216.215 (talk) 00:47, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Colors on the Maori language distribution map ??

Please explain, what the light blue and dark blue colors on this map mean?

•   
  ?
•   
  ?

Thank you in advance 2A02:8084:983C:EA80:5DDB:6532:1D87:6E24 (talk) 22:06, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

The map doesn't include any explanation. @Fobos92: created the map, but they seem mostly inactive, at least on the English Wikipedia. Compare the map to File:TeReoMaori2013.png, created by @Vardion: and appearing later in the article, which does have a legend, and both appear to be using the same data. The darker blue on Fobos92's map includes areas where less than 5% speak Māori, and the lighter blue presumably has an even smaller percentage. However, Fobos92's map is by territorial unit, but Vardion's map is by much smaller census area units, which makes a detailed comparison difficult. As both maps are now quite dated, it would be useful if someone could produce a more current version. The 2023 census data should be available in a couple of months, so we could wait until then. In the meantime, I suggest we remove Fobos92's version as being less useful than Vardion's.-Gadfium (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2024 (UTC)