Te reo Māori in Information Technology

Māori language is being used in computers, software and the Internet more and more all the time. Many people think that te reo Māori is not used in information technology at all or not enough to worry about¹. Hence the purpose of this brief article.

Māori are grasping information technology (IT) and adapting it to our needs at a rapid pace. We are taking to IT, like it is pork bones and puha! There is even a Computer Science course at Waikato University taught solely in te reo Māori ². This is a major step to using reo in IT. The course is a first and I believe the only one in New Zealand. The statistics for passes appear very high in this course³. The helps to bridge the barrier for some Māori into the IT industry.

One of the many benefits of the Māori computer course at Waikato is that copious new terminology was created. Māori had no terms for computer, Internet etc. Most common aspects of computer and internet terminology have at least a widely unofficially used word now. Ipurangi for Internet, rorohiko for computer, and hundreds more. There is also a number of official terms made official by The MāoriLanguage Commission⁴.

Māori content including language resources are on the Internet in huge quantities. It is impossible to count. Using the popular Internet search engine www.altavista.com. I searched for the word 'Maori ' (note no macrons) and was delivered 77,880 web pages. This is not taking into account that many pages and sites written in Māori probably would not use the word 'Māori ' in them.

A lot of Māori web sites now have an option to view in English or Māori ⁵. Maybe the biggest obstacle to bilingual web pages is macrons. It appears that current generations have been brought up with macrons, and to read non macronised Māori text is often un-readable. Technology over the years has allowed for macrons in computers⁶. Unfortunately the technology is not always known about or practised. We are now beginning to see the Māori language being written correctly in computers, something which used to be impossible. This is also an encouragement for Māori IT enthusiasts.

The New Zealand Māori Internet Society (NZMIS) was recently established to make the Internet more culturally Māori , and to try and obtain Māori web addresses (second level domain names) more appropriate to Māori society in general. NZMIS was also established to form a group of Māori Internet users and web writers⁷. By promoting new Māoriweb addresses, te reo Māori will be promoted to new levels in our Māori and European communities. Domain names (second to last part of a Web page address, i.e. .co of .co.nz) such as .maori.nz and .marae.nz and others, are being sought by NZMIS. At the moment there is only one Māori second level domain name and that is iwi (.nz).

Only a few years ago there was no Māori language software; in fact there was no Māori software at all. Now, there are at least 10 different pieces of Māori software that I know of on the market as commercial and free software. There are also a number of Māori culture software titles. That is 10 reo software products in five years. Now that technology is greater and there are more Māori graduating and learning IT, we should see a lot more. There is an ever increasing demands for bilingual software by kura kaupapa and others.

Discussion is presently under way, regarding default Māori proofing tools in Microsoft Windows and Office. This will hopefully lead to a reo Māori version of Windows and Office in the near future.

¹ Personal experience from invitations to hui etc

² http://www.waikato.ac.nz/smpd/tetaka/tuhituhi.html

³ http://www2.waikato.ac.nz/smpd/taka/TLDUconf.html

⁴ Māori Language Commission: http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz

⁵ Te Kete Ipurangi: http://www.tki.org.nz/

⁶ Technical Paper for Māori writers: http://www.kupu.mainpage.net/

⁷ www.nzmis.mainpage.net

Karaitiana Taiuru

N.B. This article was written in July 2000 and unfortunately many of the web pages referenced have been moved or removed since then.