| Moriori | |
|---|---|
| Ta Rē Moriori | |
| Native to | New Zealand |
| Region | Polynesia |
| Ethnicity | Moriori |
| Extinct | 1898, with the death ofHirawanu Tapu |
| Revival | Revitalisation Ongoing (2014)[1] |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | rrm |
| Glottolog | mori1267 |
Moriori, orta rē Moriori[2] ('the Moriori language'), is aPolynesian language most closely related toNew Zealand Māori. It is spoken by theMoriori, the indigenous people ofNew Zealand'sChatham Islands (Rēkohu in Moriori), an archipelago located east of theSouth Island. Moriori went extinct as a first language at the turn of the 20th century, butrevitalisation attempts are ongoing.
Moriori is a Polynesian language that diverged from Māori dialects after centuries of isolation, while still remaining mutually intelligible. The language has aguttural diction[dubious –discuss] and consistentsuppression of terminal vowels, meaning that, unlike in Māori, words may end in consonants.[3][4]
The Chatham Islands' first European contact was on 29 November 1791 with the visit ofHMSChatham, captained by William Broughton. The crew landed in Waitangi harbour and claimed the island for Britain.
Thegenocide of the Moriori people by mainland Māoriiwi (tribes)Ngāti Mutunga andNgāti Tama occurred during the autumn of 1835.[5] Approximately 300 were killed, around one-sixth of the original population.[6] Of those who survived, some were kept as slaves, andsome were subsequently eaten. The Moriori were not permitted to marry other Moriori or have children, which endangered their survival and their language. The impact on the Moriori population, culture, and language was so severe that by 1862, only 101 Moriori remained alive.[7] By the 1870s few spoke the language.[8]
The three principal documents on which knowledge of the Moriori language is now based are a manuscript petition written in 1862 by a group of surviving Moriori elders to GovernorGeorge Grey; a vocabulary of Moriori words collected by Samuel Deighton,[9] Resident Magistrate from 1873 to 1891, published in 1887; and a collection of Moriori texts made by Alexander Shand and published in 1911.[10][11]
The death of the Moriori language went unrecorded,[10] butJohann Friedrich Wilhelm Baucke (1848–1931) was the last man who could speak it.[12]
Samuel Deighton's vocabulary of Moriori words was republished as an appendix ofMichael King'sMoriori: A People Rediscovered (1989).
The language was reconstructed forBarry Barclay's 2000 film documentaryThe Feathers of Peace,[13] in a recreation of Moriori contact withPākehā and Māori.
In 2001, as part of a cultural revival movement, Moriori people began attempts to revive the language and compiled a database of Moriori words.[14] There is a POLLEX (Polynesian Lexicon Project Online) database of Moriori words as well.[15] A language app is available for Android devices.[16]
The2006 New Zealand census showed 945 people choosing to include "Moriori" amongst their tribal affiliations, compared to 35 people in the 1901 census.[17] In the2013 New Zealand census the number of people who identified as having Moriori ancestry declined to 738, however members of theimi (Moriori equivalent foriwi)[18] estimate the population to be as many as 3,500.[19]
In 2021 an app calledTa Rē Moriori was launched to teach the Moriori language to as many new people as possible.[16]
In 2023, there was a petition for the establishment of a Moriori Language Week.[20][21] In November 2025, the Hokotehi Moriori Trust ran the first Moriori language week.[22]
In 2024, author Kate Preece published a trilingual children's book: Ten Nosey Weka, featuring words in English, Māori and Moriori.[23]
Words in Moriori often have different vowels from their Māoricounterparts.
The prepositiona in Moriori corresponds toe in Māori, the prepositionka toki,eriki toariki (lord, chief),reimata toroimata (tear),wihine towahine (woman), and so forth.
Sometimes a vowel is dropped before a consonant such asna (ena),ha (aha) and after a consonant likerangat (rangata),nawen (nawene),hok (hoki),or (oro), andmot (motu), thus leaving a closed syllable. In this regard, it is similar to theSouthern dialects of Māori, in whichapocope is occasionally found. A vowel is also sometimes dropped after a vowel in the case the preceding vowel is lengthened and sometimes before a vowel, where the remaining vowel is lengthened.[4][3]
The consonants[k],[h], and[t] can sometimes be aspirated and palatalised, such asMotchuhar instead ofMotuhara.
LikeMāori, written Moriori uses theLatin script, withmacrons to denote lengthened vowels:
Note: Shand includes a 'v' in the Moriori language,[11] however, none of the Moriori words captured by Deighton and Baucke feature a 'v'.[9][24] Shand also describes the rounded high vowel written 'u' as similar to the French phoneme /y/,[11] and is said to be different from the phoneme reflected in Māori.
The death of the Moriori language was not documented in any detail...
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ignored ISBN errors (link)Baucke was eventually the last man alive to know the Moriori language.
