Moriori is a

Polynesian language The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

most closely related to New Zealand Māori and was spoken by the

Moriori The Moriori are the native Polynesian people of the Chatham Islands (''Rēkohu'' in Moriori; ' in Māori), New Zealand. Moriori originated from Māori settlers from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE. This was near the time of th ...

, the indigenous people of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about te ...

(''Rēkohu'' in Moriori), an archipelago located east of the South Island.

History

The Chatham Islands' first European contact was with William R. Broughton of Great Britain who landed on 29 November 1791 and claimed the islands which he named after his ship, HMS ''Chatham''. Broughton's crewmen intermarried with the women of Moriori. The genocide of the Moriori people by mainland Māori iwi (tribes)

Ngāti Mutunga Ngāti Mutunga is a Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand, whose original tribal lands were in north Taranaki. They migrated from Taranaki, first to Wellington (with Ngāti Toa and other Taranaki Hāpu), and then to the Chatham Islands (along wit ...

and

Ngāti Tama Ngāti Tama is a historic Māori iwi of present-day New Zealand which whakapapas back to Tama Ariki, the chief navigator on the Tokomaru waka. The iwi of Ngati Tama is located in north Taranaki around Poutama. The Mōhakatino river marks the ...

occurred during the autumn of 1835. Approximately 300 were killed, around one sixth of the original population. Of those who survived, some were kept as slaves, and some were subsequently eaten. The Moriori were not permitted to marry other Moriori or have children with them, which caused their survival and that of their language to be endangered. The impact on the Moriori population, culture, and language was so severe that by 1862 only 101 Moriori remained alive, and by the 1870s few spoke the language. 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 Governor

George Grey Sir George Grey, KCB (14 April 1812 – 19 September 1898) was a British soldier, explorer, colonial administrator and writer. He served in a succession of governing positions: Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, Go ...

, a vocabulary of Moriori words collected by Samuel Deighton, Resident Magistrate from 1873 to 1891, published in 1887, and a collection of Moriori texts made by Alexander Shand and published in 1911.Ross Clark, "Moriori: language death (New Zealand)" in Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, Darrell T. Tryon, ''Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas'' vol. I (2011)
pp. 173–175
"The death of the Moriori language was not documented in any detail..." The death of the Moriori language went unrecorded, but Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Baucke (1848–1931) was the last man who could speak it. Samuel Deighton’s vocabulary of Moriori words was republished as an appendix of Michael King's ''Moriori: A People Rediscovered'' (1989). The language was reconstructed for

Barry Barclay Barry Ronald Barclay, MNZM (12 May 1944 – 19 February 2008) was a New Zealand filmmaker and writer of Māori (Ngāti Apa) and Pākehā (European) descent. Background Barclay was born in Masterton and raised on farms in the Wairarapa. He was edu ...

's 2000 film documentary '' The Feathers of Peace'', in a recreation of Moriori contact with

Pākehā Pākehā (or Pakeha; ; ) is a Māori term for New Zealanders primarily of European descent. Pākehā is not a legal concept and has no definition under New Zealand law. The term can apply to fair-skinned persons, or to any non- Māori New Z ...

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. There is a POLLEX (Polynesian Lexicon Project Online) database of Moriori words as well. A language app is available for Android devices. The

2006 New Zealand census The New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings ( mi, Te Tatauranga o ngā Tāngata Huri Noa i Aotearoa me ō rātou Whare Noho) is a national population and housing census conducted by government department Statistics New Zealand every five y ...

showed 945 people choosing to include "Moriori" amongst their tribal affiliations, compared to 35 people in the 1901 census. In the

2013 New Zealand census The 2013 New Zealand census was the thirty-third national census. "The National Census Day" used for the census was on Tuesday, 5 March 2013. The population of New Zealand was counted as 4,242,048, – an increase of 214,101 or 5.3% over the 20 ...

the number of people who identified as having Moriori ancestry declined to 738, however members of the imi (Moriori equivalent for ''iwi'') estimate the population to be as many as 3,500.

Alphabet

* a - * e - �* i - * o - �* u - * ā - ː* ē - �ː* ī - ː* ō - �ː* ū - ː* p - * t - * k - * m - * n - * ng - �* wh - �* h - * w - * r - ref>

Comparison with Maori

Words in Moriori often have different vowels from their Māori counterparts. The preposition ''a'' in Moriori corresponds to ''e'' in Māori, the preposition to , to (lord, chief), to (tear), to (woman), and so forth. Sometimes a vowel is dropped before a consonant such as (), () and after a consonant like (), (), (), (), and (), thus leaving a closed syllable. In this regard, it is similar to the Southern dialects of Māori, in which apocope 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. The consonants and can sometimes be aspirated and palatalised, such as instead of .

History

Alphabet

Comparison with Maori

References

Further reading