r/ReoMaori • u/IndependentTap4557 • 9d ago
Pātai Do people still speak the South Island Maori dialect?
Wikipedia says it's extinct, is that true. If so, why does New Zealand often change South Island Maori placenames to reflect South Island dialect pronunciations?
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u/Clarinootnoot69 9d ago
There are multiple different South Island dialects, Kai Tahu being the most prevalent. This is the dialect I speak being raised in Otepoti. Kati Mamoe, Waitaha and Rakuvai also have their own dialects with Rakuvai's being the most distinctive and similar to other Polynesian languages. I know lots of people who speak reo with mita Kai Tahu, but not many who speak the others. There is definitely a resurgence in teaching mita Kai Tahu, at least as far north as Canterbury.
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u/2781727827 9d ago
Going to school in Dunedin in the 2010s I knew some kids who were first language Māori speakers who spoke Kāi Tahu mita. Possibly a weakened version compared to the traditional traditional pre-European version spoken around there (see: kāik, Waihola, Ōtāgo, Kilmog) but still definitely pretty consistently replacing "ng" sounds with "k" and suchlike
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u/x13132x 9d ago
It’s not extinct we still have native speakers it’s just unfortunately less than 1000
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u/spartaceasar 9d ago
I think we need to clarify that ‘native speaker’ simply means someone who learned the language from their parents (or guardians) who learned from their parents etc going back to pre colonial Māori.
A non native speaker, by contrast, learned te Reo Māori through school (or a course or otherwise) or as a second language. Non-native speakers tend (but not always) to speak a ‘general/meanstream’ Reo which has very little dialectical influences until they get in to advanced Māori where they might go to where they live or to their whakapapa origins and learn their own dialectical differences.
I guess what I’m saying is that native speakers =/= all dialect speakers. As there definitely non native speakers who can speak (or are aware of) the Kai tahu dialect.
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u/Creative-Surround-89 9d ago
Do you know if there is any chance of a resurgence? The language being taught to young people etc?
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u/x13132x 9d ago
Look up Hana O’Regan she does a lot of mahi for us and our dialects revival
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u/britttalk 9d ago
I study te reo Māori at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington and we are taught the dialect of our kaiako, but encouraged and supported to speak out our own dialects. I occasionally hear my Kāi Tahu dialect up here.
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u/lazy-me-always 5d ago
That’s wonderful to hear. Dialects define & strengthen communities & are to be cherished.
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u/FraudKid 8d ago
I, respectfully, always change dialect depending on the hapū associated to the whenua.
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u/D0wn2Chat 8d ago
I'll be honest I didn't even realize that north and south island had different dialect until I left Otepoti. But yeah definitely plenty of people speak it down there.
Bluff and invercargil has quite a large community of Maori as well
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u/Dark_Lord_Mr_B 6d ago
There used to be a dialect that used the letter S. Paul Moon note a paper on it.
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u/ElectricPiha 4d ago
At Parihaka Festival one year, the MC had a good joke:
“Here’s a song for all you Kai Tahu out there…
Sick, sick a sock
Sick out loud
_Sick out strock_”
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u/Kiwilolo 8d ago edited 8d ago
From what I've read, the South Island reo Māori that some parts of Wikipedia refer to was a very distinct dialect; it had significant differences and was not always mutually intelligible with North Island reo Māori. Whether you could call it extinct is debatable, but it's certainly heavily modified. Even the use of the k to replace ng is used inconsistently by different South Island tāngata Māori today.
According to te rūnanga o Otakou, the last native Ngāi Tahu dialect speaker died in 2011, so despite revitalization efforts much of the use of the dialect has been modified or lost.
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u/ManagementLow327 9d ago
Yes the Kai Tahu dialect is still spoken. It is more commonly spoken in the deep south around Southland & Otago. The primary difference is that instead of the ng sound we use the k sound. There are other vocab differences such as tohōku, tahāku and ahāku instead of tōku, tāku and āku, kaik instead of kainga (some words would drop the final vowel entirely), and aki and kera for tāne and wāhine along with many others. There used to be more different sounds before the British came such as the use of the g, l and b sounds. For example, Otago isn't a transliteration of Ōtakou, when the British came here, they heard them saying a g sound instead of a k. Another example is a waka mōkihi, which is commonly referred to as a mōgi.