Of Weka and Waiata: Familiarity with Borrowings from Te Reo Māori

Abstract

Māori words are a distinctive feature of New Zealand English. They account for roughly six of every thousand running words in both spoken and written New Zealand English and are increasing as a proportion of the language in use. The fact, however, that an increasing number of Māori words are being used does not necessarily mean that they are familiar to speakers of New Zealand English. Earlier estimates of the number of Māori words (other than proper nouns) familiar to the average speaker of New Zealand English have been in the range of 40 to 50. In order to investigate this question, a survey was designed and implemented with 674 senior secondary students in the greater Wellington area. The survey found differences between male and female respondents in their familiarity with Māori words, and between Māori and non-Māori, with those differences being most pronounced with words referring to material and social cultural aspects of Māoridom. The survey also provided support for earlier claims that future growth in the Māori component of the New Zealand English lexicon is likely to come from the social cultural domain, and suggested that previous estimates of the size of an average New Zealand English speaker’s Māori word vocabulary have been too conservative.