Maori Resources

New Zealanders are now able to use Office 2003 and Windows XP in Māori.

Microsoft New Zealand in partnership with the Māori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori) and Waikato University's School of Māori and Pacific Development have developed Māori Language Interface Packs for Windows XP and Office 2003.

The Language Interface Packs enable your organisation to install a reo Māori layer on top of an existing installation of Microsoft Windows XP and standard Microsoft Office applications - including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.

They are free to download and they enable Māori language speakers to work more easily in their preferred language whether at home, in business or education.

EITHER

Download your free interface pack for Microsoft Office 2003 - (7mb)

Download your free interface pack for Windows XP - (4.4mb)

Download your free Keyboard Māori macronisor for Windows XP or 2003.

Download your copy of the Orthographic Conventions for writing Māori (Rich text format: Mac or Windows).

OR

Receive all products, including 20-odd Māori macronised fonts for Windows (Truetype) on one CD for $10.00 Inc GST and freight :

8.88

New Zealand Māori Keyboard Definition

Macrons

In written Māori macrons are the line you can see above vowels from time to time. For example, there is a macron over the ‘a’ in Māori.

The purpose of the macron is to indicate the correct pronunciation of that vowel. A vowel with a macron is lengthened in pronunciation. To hear the difference check out the pronunciation page in the Learners section of this Kōrero Māori website.

In the early days of written Māori no distinction was made in writing or print between vowels of different length. Later, people sometimes doubled these vowels in writing. However this wasn’t a satisfactory solution as there are words spelt with doubled vowels to show that the word originates from two words which have been joined together to form a new meaning. Occasionally there are words with double vowels which are sounded separately (or reduplicated) rather than being lengthened.

So the macron has come into use to indicate the longer sound.

For advice on using macrons

Brief Description

This download reconfigures the US/International keyboards supplied in New Zealand to support the macron characters used in the Māori language.

Additional Information

After installing the Māori Keyboard definition a user can press the [~`] key once then any vowel. This applies to upper case as well as lower case letters. If a user requires the left quotation the user simply presses the key twice. If the user needs to use the tilde character, they simply use the traditional method of [Shift]+[~`]. i.e. the ā character would be entered by pressing the [~`] key then the [a] key.