page_title: Māori language
section_title: Geographic distribution
hierarchical_section_title: Māori language / Geographic distribution
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of New Zealand showing the percentage of people in each census area unit who speak the Māori language (as of the 2013 census). &#160;&#160; Less than 5% &#160;&#160; More than 5% &#160;&#160; More than 10% &#160;&#160; More than 20% &#160;&#160; More than 30% &#160;&#160; More than 40% &#160;&#160; More than 50%
context_page_description: Māori, also known as te reo, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian, it gained recognition as one of New Zealand's official languages in 1987. The number of speakers of the language has declined sharply since 1945, but a Māori language revitalisation effort slowed the decline, and the language has experienced a revival, particularly since about 2015.
  A national census undertaken in 2013 reported that about 149,000 people, or 3.7% of the New Zealand population, could hold a conversation in Māori about everyday things. As of 2015, 55% of Māori adults reported some knowledge of the language; of these, 64% use Māori at home and around 50,000 people can speak the language "very well" or "well".
  The Māori language did not have an indigenous writing system. Missionaries arriving from about 1814 learned to speak Māori, and introduced the Latin alphabet. In 1817 Tītore, and his junior relative, Tui, sailed to England. They visited Professor Samuel Lee at Cambridge University and assisted him in the preparation of a grammar and vocabulary of Māori.
context_section_description: Nearly all speakers are ethnic Māori resident in New Zealand. Estimates of the number of speakers vary: the 1996 census reported 160,000, while other estimates have reported as few as 10,000 fluent adult speakers in 1995 according to the Māori Language Commission.
  As reported in the 2013 national census, only 21.31 per cent of Māori (self-identified) had a conversational knowledge of the language, and only around 6.5 per cent of those speakers, 1.4 per cent of the total Māori population, spoke the Māori language only. This percentage has been in decline in recent years, from around a quarter of the population to 21 per cent. However, the number of speakers In the same census, Māori speakers were 3.7 per cent of the total population.
  The level of competence of self-professed Māori speakers varies from minimal to total. Statistics have not been gathered for the prevalence of different levels of competence. Only a minority of self-professed speakers use Māori as their main language at home. The rest use only a few words or phrases (passive bilingualism).
  Māori still is a community language in some predominantly-Māori settlements in the Northland, Urewera and East Cape areas. Kohanga reo Māori-immersion kindergartens throughout New Zealand use Māori exclusively. Increasing numbers of Māori raise their children bilingually.
  Urbanisation after the Second World War led to widespread language shift from Māori predominance (with Māori the primary language of the rural whānau) to English predominance (English serving as the primary language in the Pākehā cities). Therefore, Māori-speakers almost always communicate bilingually, with New Zealand English as either their first or second language. Only around 9,000 people speak only in Māori.
  The use of the Māori language in the Māori diaspora is far lower than in New Zealand itself. Census data from Australia show it as the home language of 11,747, just 8.2% of the total Australian Māori population in 2016. However, this could just be due to more Māori immigrants leaving to Australia.
caption: Speakers of Māori according to the 2013 census.   < 5%   5–10%   10–20%   20–30%   30–40%   40–50%   > 50%
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