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Unlike the many aboriginal languages in Australia the Maori language, the indigenous tongue of the New Zealand islands, is one which has made its mark on the English of the new settlers, both in initial contact and through the colonial period, and it continues to exercise its influence today, as the two societies shoulder on uneasily towards the position of integration or biculturalism both necessitated and desired there, by reason of the urbanization of the Maori, the marked increase in his numbers, and the realisation, over the last decade, that the question of race integration is the most important problem facing the present generation of New Zealanders. For the reputation of being recognised as one of the nations in the vanguard of those that are building multi-racial societies may well have been too easily awarded and indeed under some challenge in the early 1970s. Linguistically the Maori is by far the most significant of the non- British groups in New Zealand, and the small pockets of others are not likely to cause major changes in vocabulary or idiom in the short term. |
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