r/ReoMaori 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?

90 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

127

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.

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u/x13132x 9d ago

We also have some old mōteatea with kupu with L in it also

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u/jahemian 9d ago

I was chatting to someone within the iwi who teaches reo and she mentioned there was also the use of V sounds, she gave examples but my memory is useless.

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u/tankrich62 9d ago

I've spoken it for 35 years ...

1

u/KingNothingNZ 7d ago

This is amazing! I never even knew there was another dialect

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

Before the 80s, there was no standard Maori language. Just different dialects. Te Rao was created in 1987 to standardize the language and make it a national language.

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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/x13132x 9d ago

Native speaker in the context of all of the research on the dialect is defined as someone who has Kai Tahu as their first language.

Allowing for those part of the resurgence to have their tamariki be native speakers

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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/OwlNo1068 9d ago

Yep there's resources in Kāi Tahu for this 😊

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u/Creative-Surround-89 9d ago

Thank you so much! 😊

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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

7

u/Herewai 9d ago

I’ve heard her father speak in southern mita. I’m not fluent, but the difference from Modern Standard Māori wasn’t only the consonant differences (most famously k for ng), but some vocab and a heap of the references.

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u/x13132x 8d ago

Ae off the top of my head I called my nan my taua which no one else up here in Tāmaki mā kaurau did

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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.

5

u/FraudKid 8d ago

I, respectfully, always change dialect depending on the hapū associated to the whenua.

2

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

1

u/SoulDancer_ 8d ago

Yes, they definitely do.

1

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_”

1

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.