Cook Islands Māori

hear the...

It's Cook Island Language Week, so at least hit me with a kia

ora.

I

Kia ora.

Kia ora.

Happy Cook Island Language Week.

Yeah, there we go.

Yesterday, I was in the Cook Island campaign.

The cultural advisor came up to me while we were on the field, and he goes, hey, do you know how to speak your Cook Island Māori? I'm like, oh, not really.

But he's like, oh, when you introduce yourself, you have to do it in Cook Island Māori.

I'm like, man, I was brought up in Dunedin.

And then, so on the field, he was giving me a lesson.

alongside languages such as Hawaiian and Rapa Nui.

Its closest linguistic relatives include Cook Islands Maori and Tahitian.

These relationships reflect the relatively recent common ancestry of Polynesian languages, compared with the much deeper divisions across the wider Austronesian family.

Patterns of settlement in that region are long and complicated, but Maori ancestors settled Aotearoa in New Zealand in around the late 13th century, having travelled from East and Polynesia.