The Minister of Māori Affairs, Hon Dr Pita Sharples announced a proposed change in te reo strategy but failed to miss the fact that technology plays a vital role in this area. For any language to be spoken by the masses it must be normalised and easy to access and widely used in not only…

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Google recently announced its support for several minority languages to translate into and from English with Māori being one of the minority languages. Background information from my October 15 2009 post is here. To use the translator visit http://translate.google.com For years a computer generated system to translate to and from te reo Māori has only…

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A fantastic Twitter tool that Tweets pre-set Māori language phrases, questions and sentences is available to use. Created by Professor Kevin Scannell of Saint Louis University, the te reo Māori sentences have been added by myself, by sourcing popular phrases and high frequency lists of sentences. It is an ideal tool for beginners of te…

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A recent collaboration between GodZone Internet Services a domain name company and myself as the .iwi.nz moderator will ensure that Iwi can now register their web addresses and names with macrons within the exclusive .iwi.nz address. For example ngāi-mea.iwi.nz is now a feasible web address. Despite such technology being available for the past 3 years,…

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Reo has to evolve or it will die, and it cannot be controlled by a small team; it has to be community driven. Gate keepers of the Māori language only hinder and halt its evolution. We live in an Information Technology driven society that needs Maori language to adapt. I have documented my personal thoughts…

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Commercial Māori language projects hold our people to ransom for what is our birth right – our language  The Papakupu is a Māori Language Dictionary that consists of headwords from published Māori dictionaries , databases, glossaries and Iwi dictionaries. It is estimated there will be over 150,000 unique headwords with each headword consisting of up…

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Archived from September 13 2012 Facebook is now available in the Maori language thanks to a small partnership of language revitalisation experts. View the word list https://www.taiuru.co.nz/publicationslib/facebook-maori-language-terms.pdf We live in exciting times in terms of the Māori language where with the right combination of Language speakers and technical people we are able to have software and…

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Māori will soon have a bilingual Internet system and guaranteed protection of Iwi and God Names with the introduction of the new web address .kiwi being introduced possibly next year.   .kiwi http://www.dot-kiwi.com/ will be an alternative to the current options of domain names such as .nz or .org . .kiwi will be introduced along with a…

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It has been a busy past two weeks with major Māori initiatives and developments by New Zealand telcos and associated parties. This is a summary of those initiatives with an explanation of who the Māori groups are. 2 Degrees 2Degrees Mobile announced a Te Reo Maori smart phone, the IDEOS X3 , while at the Te Huarahi Tika Trust…

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2 Degrees yesterday announced  the release of an Android phone with Māori menus. They did not mention that they have in fact blocked the development of Māori language development with smart phones for those who do not use 2Degrees and their “one” mobile phone. Android phones use an open source system to operate. Open Source means…

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Using word frequency lists including: a Māori predictive text list, lists of common Māori words in New Zealand English and common Māori words used in Māori. I discuss and analyse which words would be most beneficial in a Māori predictive text database for Māori and introduce the need to update New Zealand English databases used…

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The vowels with macrons indicate the vowel is pronounced longer. 1. E Ihowā Atua, O ngā iwi mātou rā Āta whakarangona; Me aroha noa Kia hua ko te pai; Kia tau tō atawhai; Manaakitia mai Aotearoa 2. Ōna mano tāngata Kiri whero, kiri mā, Iwi Māori, Pākehā, Rūpeke katoa, Nei ka tono ko ngā hē Māu…

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I gladly accepted an invitation to participate as a practitioner for the on-line dialogue on Using Citizen Media Tools to Promote Under-Represented Languages from November 16 to 22, 2011 from New Tactics http://www.newtactics.org . I am writing this post in the hope to raise more publicity of this key initiative which will allow anyone with a…

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It is hard to believe that a decade ago I nervously released Te Ngutu Kura Māori Spell Checker for Windows: then just last week I released version 3 with over 58,000 words for a wide range of applications and systems. It was about 12 years ago I created Moana Kupu Māori spell checker, which is…

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Macrons can be simply created with Māori keyboards available for all computer and smart phone systems. No longer does the need to press multiple keys to create a macron exist, despite the many articles which suggest otherwise. As an advocate and developer of macron technologies for more than 12 years: I am shocked that so many articles…

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Google Māori is still in dire need of translations to complete its user interface in Māori language. The statistics below show that many parts of Google are still 100% English. Contrary to popular belief, anyone with a Gmail account, can begin translating Google into Māori. You do not have to commit to plethora of translations,…

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