Provisional Results From The 2001 Survey On The Health Of The Māori Language

7 December 2001

Highlights

Forty-two percent of Māori aged 15 years and over (136,600 people) have some Māori language skills.
Nine percent of all Māori adults said they could speak Māori 'well' or 'very well'. A further 33 percent cold speak Māori 'fairly well' or 'not very well', and the remaining 58 percent could speak 'no more than a few words or phrases' of Māori.
Speaking proficiency generally increased with age, although there is some indication that the proportion with high proficiency skills is increasing in the youngest surveyed age group of 15-24 years (5,400 people aged 15-24 years had high proficiency skills compared with 2,800 people aged 25г4 years).
Young women were more likely to have high speaking proficiency than young men were (4,000 versus 1,4000 respectively).
Patterns for listening, reading and writing Māori were similar to those for speaking Māori, although the proficiency levels in the passive skills of listening and reading generally rated higher.
Those with high speaking proficiency skills were more likely than other people to have been exposed to the Māori language as a child.
Māori was not commonly spoken within Māori households, and outside the household it was generally confined to those contexts typically associated with Māori language use, for example, hui, marae, clubs and interest groups, or Māori language programmes.
Māori was least likely to be heard when dealing with general health providers and government service providers, eg social services, the police and courts.
Eleven percent of Māori adults (34,800 people) said they had been a student in a Māori language course in the 12 months preceding the survey.
One-fifth of Māori adults had helped or worked for one or more Māori revitalisation initiatives in the 12 months preceding the survey. These people were generally unpaid workers.

(source Statistics New Zealand, Te Puni Kōkiri, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, 2001)

Mēnā he pātai, whakapā atu ki a:
Te Kaiwhitithi Kōrero
Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori
media@tetaurawhiri.govt.nz
Tel: 04 4716 724

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