NZ Scholarship Te Reo Māori cheat sheet

Te Reo Māori: Tuhituhi, Kōrero, Whakarongo, Pānui

• Te reo Māori is delivered and assessed in Māori; the exam tests whakaaro (ideas), reo (language) and tikanga, not translation into English.

• Macrons (tohutō) mark vowel length and change meaning: kōrero (speak) vs kore (nothing), whānau (family) vs whanau (misspelled form). Length is phonemic, so a missing tohutō is a spelling error.

• The five vowels are pronounced short and long: a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū. Long vowels are held roughly twice as long as short ones.

• Consonant digraphs are ng and wh; both are single phonemes. 'ng' is a velar nasal as in 'singer', never a hard 'n-g' sequence.

• The ten consonant phonemes are: p, t, k, m, n, ng, w, wh, r, h. There is no s, f, b, d, g, l, v, or z in Māori.

• Syllable structure is (consonant) + vowel + optional vowel; every syllable ends in a vowel. No consonant clusters and no syllable-final consonants occur.

• Stress normally falls on the first long vowel, or if none, on the first syllable of the word; compound and prefix forms shift stress accordingly.

• Written conventions: use the tohutō, keep word divisions as in standard orthography, and capitalise proper nouns; dialectal variants (e.g. Ngāi Tahu k/h, w/wh) are acceptable where consistent.