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Was there ever a “Māori English”?
Author(s) -
Hughes Shaun F. D.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.0083-2919.2004.00377.x
Subject(s) - pidgin , indigenous , variety (cybernetics) , linguistics , history , population , standard english , early modern english , sociology , demography , computer science , philosophy , creole language , ecology , artificial intelligence , biology
Linguists working on New Zealand English have made strenuous attempts to identify any features of the English spoken by the indigenous or Māori population of New Zealand that could be considered as distinctively “Māori” without much success. But there is clear evidence from early texts that something that could be called a “contact pidgin” existed in the early decades of Māori‐Pākehā(non‐Māori) interaction although many Māori were from the beginning fluent speakers of English. Nevertheless, a long‐standing assumption has persisted among the Pākehā population that there is an easily identifiable Māori variety of English, and that there is a considerable body of printed material to prove this “fact.” This paper concentrates on investigating when this “Māori English” first appeared in print in the 1890s, how it was constructed, and where it might have come from, together with what its characteristics were when it finally settled down to appear in a “standard” form during what might be considered as the heyday of “Māori English,” 1910–40. The concluding observations will consider why this “Māori English” declined even though it did not disappear from most printed texts until the 1970s.