The Māori Thread
Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2018 7:25 pm
I've started to fall in love with another language that brings no apparent benefit to my life where I currently live: Māori. At least I can find Swahili speakers in my country, but I don't know of any Māori speakers at all here. I've had a thing for it for years - ever since I randomly found "Teach Yourself Maori" on the street one time, and I've never stuck with it. It's just too hard for a bit of casual fun. (Relatable!) Weirdly enough, the hardest thing to me so far is how to negate a sentence, which has never been such a big topic in any other language I've learnt. Anyway, I thought I'd make a thread about what I know so far, in case anyone is interested. If not, well, it's a space to help me organise what I know so far. I tend to chaotically find information and then forget where I found it. I can't guarantee the correctitude of this information - by all means, please correct me on anything if you know.
Phonology:
Consonants:
These are written as pronounced in IPA except /ŋ/, written ‹ng›, /f/, written ‹wh› and /ɾ/ written ‹r›.
The spelling ‹wh› reflects an earlier widespread pronunciation as [ʍ] or [ɸ]. [f] has probably always existed as well but has, probably due to English influence, come to be the most widespread pronunciation of this sound. Old loans of English words with /f/ typically have /p/, such as parāoa "bread, flour" (from "flour"). There is considerable dialectal variation, however, such as dialects around Whanganui Mt Taranaki in which /h/ is pronounced [ʔ] and /f/ as [ˀw] (or [ʔʷ]?) (Here's one example. And in this video, the reporter off screen, Eruera Rerekura, for some reason speaks with this accent, even though he doesn't otherwise. You can compare how he pronounces the word whenua as [ˈˀwenua] when everybody else says [ˈfenua]).
In most of the South Island, where the local dialects are effectively extinct, /ŋ/ was merged into /k/ and place names are spelt accordingly, such as Mt Cook/Aoraki and Stewart Island/Rakiura. Both of these place names would have /ŋ/ in North Island Māori dialects (rangi = 'sky'). Far south in the South Island, /ɾ/ was pronounced as /l/ and voicing of consonants and also dropping of final vowels was common and this is reflected in some place names (such as the district Otago).
The plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ have apparently become more aspirated under influence from English and /t/ before a high vowel is often noticeably affricated to /t͡s/. This is the only sibilant in Māori at all. (A similar change gave Tongan its /s/, I believe. I think Sāmoan is the only Polynesian language to preserve the original Proto-Polynesian */s/, but I might be wrong.)
There is a little part of me that is just like "Think of how much space would be saved if they wrote 'f' instead of 'wh' and 'g' instead of 'ng' (as in Tongan, Samoan, Fijian et many al. You could just have one character per consonant!!! But actually, aesthetically I quite like the look of <wh> and <ng>, so I don't mind too much. Ngā whare looks better than Gā fare, I think. (Although, since I went ahead and added macrons to my custom keyboard, I also added Ŋ ŋ ... and that would be nice! I'd better stop before I bust out a conlang!)
Vowels:
Māori has a pretty standard Polynesian five vowel system with each vowel coming in both long and short forms. The only notable thing about the vowel system is that /ʉ/ and /ʉː/ are fronted more than in most related languages. This fronting is probably influenced by NZ English as the realisation of /uː/ in antipodean Englishes is [ʉː]. Among older speakers and in old recordings, this fronting was mainly present after /t/ and /n/. What I find interesting, however, is that this shift from [ u ] to [ʉ] is quite consistently applied, affecting both the long and the short vowel as well as affecting its value within diphthongs. I wouldn't have expected either of these to occur under influence from English.
The long versions of the vowels are significantly longer and also slightly more peripheral (although more equal in value for younger speakers). Long vowels are not marked at all in old texts, represented by doubling the written vowel in some texts (eg. aa, ee, ii) and, as prescribed in modern usage, with a macron (ā, ē, ī etc.). This is not so where a long vowel is created by two identical vowels occurring naturally next to one another. The distinction is not audible, with a word such as whakaaro 'think' being pronounced as though written whakāro; the reason for the double vowel is a morpheme boundary; whaka+aro. This process can even extend across word boundaries, as in i a au [ACC PERS 1S] 'me' pronounced as though written i āu.
Diphthongs:
The following vowel combinations are pronounced as diphthongs: <ae> <ai> <ao> <au> <oi> <oe> <ou> as well as their long forms <āe>, <āi> etc. Again, as with long vowels, these diphthongs can apparently occur even across morpheme boundaries.
The diphthongs from the short <a> to a high vowel start slightly higher giving something like [ɜi̯] for <ai> and [ɜʉ̯] for <au>. The diphthong written <oe> often sounds to me like a rising rather than a falling diphthong, especially noticeable in the word koe which can sound like [ko̯e], almost like [kwe]. I don't know if this is backed up by research, but some phrasebooks do describe it in ways that could lead you to think that the authors hear it that way too (if anyone can actually understand what phrasebook authors mean when they describe sounds in weird, imprecise ways).
Personally, I find the distinction between <ai> and <ae> the most difficult part of Māori pronunciation. My PRICE vowel is something like [ɑe̯], so instead of trying to lower the end of <ae>, I should probably focus on raising the end of <ai> ... and raising the beginning to [ɐ]. I have no such difficulty between <au> and <ao> because the <u> is fronted everywhere, but I do have a bit of difficulty with <au> and <ou> because both [ɜʉ̯] and [oʉ̯] are within the range of my GOAT vowel (although [oʉ̯] is quite weird and I'd probably only do it in English when putting on a funny voice/accent/imitating someone with exaggeration) ... but I think maybe my problem is that I'm not really hearing any difference a lot of the time merely because a lot of people apparently merge them these days. Probably the raising of the <a> in <au> made that more likely but also the fact that these just sound like variants of the GOAT vowel to NZers and Aussies probably helped. I'm going to try to keep them separate and I have heard people say <ou> with what sounds like quite a bit less fronting on the second element and even a bit like [oʊ̯] or even [ʊu̯] if I'm not imagining things and considering there's the whole area around [ u ] in the vowel space that's quite empty, it wouldn't surprise me if something was being pulled in that direction.
Stress and Prosody:
Word stress is a little bit unpredictably but generally follows some rough rules. Vowels can be ranked from most stress attracting to least stress attracting:
Maori intonation seems to have made its mark on the English of Maori people. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's a certain type of intonation in questions especially which I hear in Māori and in English as spoken by Māori people but not in Pākehā (non-Māori, generally white NZer) English. Questions go up at the end, but you can kind of also tell early on in the sentence that it's a question. I think the whole sentence is basically raised in pitch and then an extra high bit at the end, but I can't tell exactly what it is, because statements in Māori English also tend to rise towards the end. Here's a good (and funny) example of Māori English intonation ... with statements also rising at the end, but in a particular way that sounds very Polynesian to me. Wow, that was scientific! Anyway, point is, intonation is the only thing that tells you if something is a y/n question or a statement a lot of the time, so it's important and I've explained it badly. More posts to come now that phonology is out of the way.
Phonology:
Consonants:
Code: Select all
/m/ /n/ /ŋ/
/p/ /t/ /k/
/f/ /h/
/ɾ/The spelling ‹wh› reflects an earlier widespread pronunciation as [ʍ] or [ɸ]. [f] has probably always existed as well but has, probably due to English influence, come to be the most widespread pronunciation of this sound. Old loans of English words with /f/ typically have /p/, such as parāoa "bread, flour" (from "flour"). There is considerable dialectal variation, however, such as dialects around Whanganui Mt Taranaki in which /h/ is pronounced [ʔ] and /f/ as [ˀw] (or [ʔʷ]?) (Here's one example. And in this video, the reporter off screen, Eruera Rerekura, for some reason speaks with this accent, even though he doesn't otherwise. You can compare how he pronounces the word whenua as [ˈˀwenua] when everybody else says [ˈfenua]).
In most of the South Island, where the local dialects are effectively extinct, /ŋ/ was merged into /k/ and place names are spelt accordingly, such as Mt Cook/Aoraki and Stewart Island/Rakiura. Both of these place names would have /ŋ/ in North Island Māori dialects (rangi = 'sky'). Far south in the South Island, /ɾ/ was pronounced as /l/ and voicing of consonants and also dropping of final vowels was common and this is reflected in some place names (such as the district Otago).
The plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ have apparently become more aspirated under influence from English and /t/ before a high vowel is often noticeably affricated to /t͡s/. This is the only sibilant in Māori at all. (A similar change gave Tongan its /s/, I believe. I think Sāmoan is the only Polynesian language to preserve the original Proto-Polynesian */s/, but I might be wrong.)
There is a little part of me that is just like "Think of how much space would be saved if they wrote 'f' instead of 'wh' and 'g' instead of 'ng' (as in Tongan, Samoan, Fijian et many al. You could just have one character per consonant!!! But actually, aesthetically I quite like the look of <wh> and <ng>, so I don't mind too much. Ngā whare looks better than Gā fare, I think. (Although, since I went ahead and added macrons to my custom keyboard, I also added Ŋ ŋ ... and that would be nice! I'd better stop before I bust out a conlang!)
Vowels:
Code: Select all
FRONT CENTRAL BACK
HIGH: /i iː/ /ʉ ʉː/
MID: /e eː/ /o oː/
LOW: /a aː/The long versions of the vowels are significantly longer and also slightly more peripheral (although more equal in value for younger speakers). Long vowels are not marked at all in old texts, represented by doubling the written vowel in some texts (eg. aa, ee, ii) and, as prescribed in modern usage, with a macron (ā, ē, ī etc.). This is not so where a long vowel is created by two identical vowels occurring naturally next to one another. The distinction is not audible, with a word such as whakaaro 'think' being pronounced as though written whakāro; the reason for the double vowel is a morpheme boundary; whaka+aro. This process can even extend across word boundaries, as in i a au [ACC PERS 1S] 'me' pronounced as though written i āu.
Diphthongs:
The following vowel combinations are pronounced as diphthongs: <ae> <ai> <ao> <au> <oi> <oe> <ou> as well as their long forms <āe>, <āi> etc. Again, as with long vowels, these diphthongs can apparently occur even across morpheme boundaries.
The diphthongs from the short <a> to a high vowel start slightly higher giving something like [ɜi̯] for <ai> and [ɜʉ̯] for <au>. The diphthong written <oe> often sounds to me like a rising rather than a falling diphthong, especially noticeable in the word koe which can sound like [ko̯e], almost like [kwe]. I don't know if this is backed up by research, but some phrasebooks do describe it in ways that could lead you to think that the authors hear it that way too (if anyone can actually understand what phrasebook authors mean when they describe sounds in weird, imprecise ways).
Personally, I find the distinction between <ai> and <ae> the most difficult part of Māori pronunciation. My PRICE vowel is something like [ɑe̯], so instead of trying to lower the end of <ae>, I should probably focus on raising the end of <ai> ... and raising the beginning to [ɐ]. I have no such difficulty between <au> and <ao> because the <u> is fronted everywhere, but I do have a bit of difficulty with <au> and <ou> because both [ɜʉ̯] and [oʉ̯] are within the range of my GOAT vowel (although [oʉ̯] is quite weird and I'd probably only do it in English when putting on a funny voice/accent/imitating someone with exaggeration) ... but I think maybe my problem is that I'm not really hearing any difference a lot of the time merely because a lot of people apparently merge them these days. Probably the raising of the <a> in <au> made that more likely but also the fact that these just sound like variants of the GOAT vowel to NZers and Aussies probably helped. I'm going to try to keep them separate and I have heard people say <ou> with what sounds like quite a bit less fronting on the second element and even a bit like [oʊ̯] or even [ʊu̯] if I'm not imagining things and considering there's the whole area around [ u ] in the vowel space that's quite empty, it wouldn't surprise me if something was being pulled in that direction.
Stress and Prosody:
Word stress is a little bit unpredictably but generally follows some rough rules. Vowels can be ranked from most stress attracting to least stress attracting:
- long vowels
- diphthongs
- short vowels
Maori intonation seems to have made its mark on the English of Maori people. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's a certain type of intonation in questions especially which I hear in Māori and in English as spoken by Māori people but not in Pākehā (non-Māori, generally white NZer) English. Questions go up at the end, but you can kind of also tell early on in the sentence that it's a question. I think the whole sentence is basically raised in pitch and then an extra high bit at the end, but I can't tell exactly what it is, because statements in Māori English also tend to rise towards the end. Here's a good (and funny) example of Māori English intonation ... with statements also rising at the end, but in a particular way that sounds very Polynesian to me. Wow, that was scientific! Anyway, point is, intonation is the only thing that tells you if something is a y/n question or a statement a lot of the time, so it's important and I've explained it badly. More posts to come now that phonology is out of the way.
Māori (and other Polynesian languages) manages to be so different to English and other isolating languages despite its strict morphological constraints, and you're certainly correct about its complexity.
.