Māori is a language from one of my favorite places in the world!

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/01/26 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/01/26/10120273.aspx

THE WINDOWS 7 MĀORI LANGUAGE INTERFACE PACK IS LIVE!

Click here to download the Māori Windows 7 LIP via the Microsoft.com Download Center.

Please note that the Māori Windows 7 LIP can only be installed on a system that runs an English client version of Windows 7. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems on the Download Center.

The Māori Windows 7 LIP is produced as part of the Local Language Program sponsored by Public Sector.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON MĀORI

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS:

100,000+ speakers as their first language, plus many additional speakers who can hold a conversation in Māori but don’t consider themselves fluent in the language.

NAME IN THE LANGUAGE ITSELF:

Reo Māori

The Māori language is almost exclusively spoken in New Zealand, mostly by people of Māori descent. The Māori language was recognized as second official language of New Zealand in 1987 (the other being English). It was the predominant language in New Zealand until the 1860s, then became a minority language in the shadow of English. In the 1970s concerns about the decline of Māori initiated a multitude of activities to support the survival and growth of the language. One of the language recovery programs is the Kohanga Reo (“language nests”) movement in which language immersion centers were established for pre-school children. Over 13,000 children have been enrolled in more than 700 Kohanga reo centers throughout New Zealand. There are less primary and secondary schools that continue the language exposure, but Kura Kaupapa, a primary school program in Māori, is a first step to address that issue.

With ten consonants and five vowels Māori has the richest phonological inventory of all East Polynesian languages, and the number of its speakers exceed that of any other Polynesian language. Māori is the most southerly member of the East Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family. It is most closely related to Tahitian and Rarotongan. In the 1820s a phonetic script was developed for Māori in Cambridge. Long vowels are marked with a macron: ā ē ī ō ū.

FUN FACTS:

In addition to being a great movie, Whale Rider portrays Māori culture and society. If you haven’t read the book, or viewed the movie it is highly recommended.
Like other languages, Māori has terms that are used for more than one meaning; for example, in Māori, “Kia ora” can be used as a greeting, thank you, and as a term of acknowledgement.
New Zealand’s Rugby team, the All Blacks, perform a Māori dance before every game. The dance they perform is a “Haka,” which was done by the Māori in the last century before the onset of a war.
Although all possible letters across several different letter schemes for supporting Maori from over the years are available in Windows code page 1252, many in the Māori user community prefer Windows code page 1257 (Baltic), presumably because keybaords like the widely available Latvian one includes all of the letters in their definitions.

Click here for more information about the Māori language

CLASSIFICATION:

Comparative linguists classify Māori as a Polynesian language; specifically as an Eastern Polynesian language belonging to the Tahitic subgroup, which includes Rarotongan, spoken in the southern Cook Islands, and Tahitian, spoken in Tahiti and the Society Islands. Other major Eastern Polynesian languages include Hawaiian, Marquesan (languages in the Marquesic subgroup), and the Rapa Nui language of Easter Island.[

SCRIPT:

Maori is always written in a Roman script. Two digraphs are used, “ng” represents a velar nasal, and “wh” which is nowadays mostly pronounced like an English /f/.

MICROSOFT-SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

The Windows Māori collation tables include not only the commonly used ā ē ī ō ū, but also the less commonly used alternatives (à è ì ò ù and ä ë ï ö ü). In fact the only other described form that is not included is the one that used to be championed by Professor Bruce Biggs until his death: doubled vowels (aa ee ii oo uu).
The earlier mentioned issues related to Windows code pages 1252 vs. 1257 were hotly debated at the time of the first inclusion of the locale into Windows, and to this day there are periodic complaints in the user community that the default ANSI code page for the locale is wrong, and occasionally bitter complaints that "replacement locales" in Microsoft Locale Builder cannot change their code page settings.

MICHAEL-SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

As the title mentions, New Zealand is one of my five favorite places in the whole world. Many years ago, I had my (comparatively younger) heart broken in Melbourne (Australia), but a beautiful lady in Christchurch (New Zealand) helped me move on, and smile again....

Enjoy!

John Cowan on 26 Jan 2011 9:33 AM:

I would say that ten is about the usual number of consonants for an Eastern Polynesian language to have. Maori, Cook Islands Maori, and Rapanui all have this number. Marquesan has eleven, but no one dialectd or speaker distinguishes them all. Tahitian has nine, and Hawai'ian eight.

Mark Nash on 27 Jan 2011 6:49 AM:

Many thanks for this from a native New Zealander living in DFW. I read your blog daily. I am just a lowly web/WPF developer, so it is often way over my head, but always entertaining.

Cheers

grumpykiwi at hot mail.

Yuhong Bao on 28 Jan 2011 1:10 PM:

This, along with codepage 858, made me wonder why the "default system locale" was a locale in the first place. I would have the user pick an ANSI codepage number from a list, then have the user pick a possible corresponding OEM codepage number.

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