Māori dialects: Kāi Tahu’s k and Whanganui’s h

Māori dialects differ mainly in how a handful of sounds are said and in some everyday words, not in grammar, and a fluent speaker of one understands the others. In the south, Kāi Tahu say k where other Māori say ng, which is why the iwi is both Ngāi Tahu and Kāi Tahu and the mountain is Aoraki rather than Aorangi. In Whanganui and Taranaki the h is not simply dropped: it became a glottal stop, the catch in the middle of uh-oh, which English ears tend not to notice. Tūhoe say n for ng, and parts of the north say haka- for whaka-. This guide sets out each difference, the words that change from region to region, how the dialects show in place names, and how they are being kept alive.

Updated 18 October 2026 · 10 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

The Māori dialects at a glance

Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, describes three major dialect divisions: eastern North Island, western North Island and South Island Māori. Within them, these are the differences a learner is most likely to hear:

Where	What changes	Example
Kāi Tahu, South Island	k where other dialects have ng	karanga ‘call of welcome’ becomes karaka; kāinga ‘home, village’ becomes kāika
Whanganui and Taranaki	h said as a glottal stop; wh as a glottal stop followed by w	haere ‘go’ said ’aere; Whanganui sounds like Wanganui to most English ears
Tūhoe	n where other dialects have ng	Whangārei said Wha-na-rei
Parts of Northland, Ngāpuhi	h for wh in whaka-	whakahaere ‘to run, organise’ sounds like hakahaere

None of these is a mistake, and none changes how the word is normally written. The sections below give the evidence for each, and the Māori pronunciation guide covers how the standard sounds are made.

How different are the dialects?

Less than the sounds suggest. Te Ara says South Island Māori probably derives from eastern North Island Māori, and that Moriori, the language of the Chatham Islands, may in turn derive from South Island Māori. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, one of the Kāi Tahu rūnaka, points the same way from the south: their reo differs from other dialects, but Ray Harlow found a significant correlation with the East Coast of the North Island, because Kāi Tahu share whakapapa with Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Porou. The rūnaka’s notes, citing Harlow’s 1979 work, put the line between dialects and separate languages at 81–100% shared cognates, and say plainly that their language “is not so unusual as to not be understood at all by other iwi”.

Grammar barely varies. The linguist Winifred Bauer, in her reference grammar of Māori, describes most tribal variation in grammar as “a matter of preferences”: speakers prefer one form but recognise and understand the other. The real differences are pronunciation, vocabulary and idiom.

Kāi Tahu or Ngāi Tahu? The southern k

They are the same iwi. Hana O’Regan, who has led the revival of the dialect, told RNZ that “the most identifiable and probably well known characteristic is the use of the K instead of the ng”, so that karanga becomes karaka. Applied to the iwi’s own name, Ngāi Tahu becomes Kāi Tahu. The Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 uses Ngāi Tahu throughout, yet the same Act prints southern forms in the iwi’s own statements: the one on its association with Whenua Hou names “Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Waitaha kā iwi”, with kā for ngā ‘the (plural)’.

Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou states that it “supports the dialectual ‘K’”, and the iwi’s language programme is called Kotahi Mano Kāika, “a thousand homes”. A published convention shows how the two are balanced in writing: Christchurch City Libraries, following Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, uses the ng form in running text but k for the names of people, places, plants and animals, where it is more common.

The k in the oldest southern writing

The difference was noticed as soon as missionaries arrived. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou records that the Reverend James Watkins, who reached Karitāne in 1840 having learned his Māori in the north, wrote: “I soon found out that the dialect spoken here differs materially from that of the North Island.” His word list had no ng. Southern writers spoke with k but were taught to write with ng, so their letters mix the two. The rūnaka holds up an 1852 letter from H. K. Taiaroa as a model of the Kāi Tahu reo of its day. It begins:

TE 1 O KĀ RĀ O MĀRUAROA 1852 …
Kauraka hoki a roa atu, kia wawe te roko atu mātau.

The rūnaka points out the features: kā for ngā; Māruaroa, the southern name for March; kauraka, the same as kaua ‘do not’; and mātau for mātou ‘we (not you)’. The roko of the second line is rongo ‘to hear’ with the southern k.

More than one letter

The southern dialect has other marks too. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou notes that the missionary J. Wohlers, on Ruapuke Island from 1844, commented on how close l and r, and p and b, were in southern speech. Vowels at the ends of words can be clipped, too. Locals often call the Ōtākou settlement “the kāik”, and Paulette Tamati-Elliffe, manager of Kotahi Mano Kāika, told the Otago Daily Times that it is kāika with the last vowel dropped: “It’s just that clipping of the vowel”, and “kāik just simply means kāika, which is a place of settlement, a home.” There are many kāik across Te Waipounamu, she said. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou gives Dunedin names that should be written otherwise: Waihola, recorded as Waihora by Taiaroa in 1880; Taieri for Taiari; Wakari for Whakaari.

The southern dialect came close to disappearing. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou says the last native speaker raised at Ōtākou, Tarewai Wesley, died in 1969, and Charisma Rangipunga told TE KARAKA that when Kotahi Mano Kāika began in 2000 “you could count the native speakers of our Kāi Tahu mita on one hand”.

Does Whanganui drop the h?

Not exactly. In Taranaki, and up the Whanganui River as far as Taumarunui, the h of Māori was replaced by a glottal stop before Europeans arrived. Bauer, drawing on the linguists Bruce Biggs and Ray Harlow, gives the local pronunciation of haere ‘go’ as ’aere and of haka as ’aka, with the glottal stop where the h was. The wh of Whanganui has the same glottal stop and then a w.

English speakers make glottal stops all the time without noticing, and have learned to ignore one at the start of a word. Bauer writes that the local pronunciation “will sound to most listeners as if the <h> is being ignored”. That is the truth inside “Whanganui drops the h”: the h is replaced, not removed, and the settlers who heard the name most likely, in Bauer’s view, wrote down only the w. In Māori spelling every dialect writes wh, whatever sound it gives it, so the spelling stays the same in Whanganui as everywhere else.

Wanganui to Whanganui

The h came back into the official names one at a time. Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand records each step:

Year	What changed
1991	Wanganui River became Whanganui River, on a proposal from the Whanganui River Māori Trust Board.
2009	Te Rūnanga o Tupoho asked for the city to be spelt Whanganui. The New Zealand Geographic Board recommended it, but in December the Minister for Land Information, Maurice Williamson, made Wanganui and Whanganui official alternatives, and told Crown agencies to prefer Whanganui.
2012	After the law was amended to allow alternative official names, both spellings were gazetted on 13 December.
2015	Wanganui District became Whanganui District, at the council’s own request.
2019	The region became Manawatū-Whanganui.

So 2009 did not make Whanganui the only official spelling of the city: it made it one of two. What the name means is told in Māori place names and what they mean.

Tūhoe’s n and the north’s haka-

Te Ara says that “Ngāi Tūhoe pronounce the ‘ng’ as ‘n’”. Sir Tīmoti Kāretu, who grew up on the edge of Tūhoe country at Waikaremoana, told RNZ that the isolation of the region let its language survive, but added a qualification: the ng has become a straight n “but not throughout the whole of Tūhoe”. RNZ’s examples were Ngāruawāhia said Na-ru-a-wahia and Whangārei said Wha-na-rei.

In parts of Northland, Te Ara says, the wh of whaka- is said as h, so whakahaere sounds like hakahaere. The Northland educator Evelyn Tobin gave RNZ the same feature, “to in fact drop the W and overemphasise the H”, so that whakarongo ‘listen’ is sometimes hakarongo. Bauer adds that in the far north an hw sound is at least as likely as the f that is commonest today.

Different words in different places

Vocabulary varies too, and Te Aka Māori Dictionary labels many words by region. Each is normal in its own region:

Regional word	Where, in Te Aka	Meaning, and the other form
taua	Ngāi Tahu dialect	grandmother, elderly woman
kōkā	eastern dialect	mother, aunty
mātau, tātau	eastern dialect	we: for mātou and tātou
tipuna	eastern dialect	ancestor, grandparent: tupuna in the west
whea	especially western dialects	where?: a variation of hea
kūkupa	northern dialects	New Zealand pigeon: kererū elsewhere

Te Aka’s example for taua pairs it with pōua ‘grandfather’, and Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou lists words that Kāi Tahu share with the East Coast iwi, among them hākui ‘mother’ and hākoro ‘father’, huanui ‘road’, pōhatu ‘rock’ and tātau. Evelyn Tobin told RNZ that Ngāpuhi have an alternative to kōrua ‘you two’, pronounced kourua or kaurua. The family words are set out in full in Māori family words.

Where the accounts differ

Point	One source	Another
The order of the sounds in Whanganui’s wh	Te Ara: “‘w’ followed by a glottal stop”	Bauer, citing Biggs and Harlow: a glottal stop followed by w
Which h changes	Te Ara mentions only wh	Bauer: every h, as in ’aere and ’aka
The 2009 decision on the city	Bauer (2010): the Minister made Whanganui the official spelling, with a period of grace	LINZ: Wanganui and Whanganui both became official alternatives
How far Tūhoe say n	Te Ara: Ngāi Tūhoe say ng as n	Kāretu: not throughout the whole of Tūhoe
Southern words for elders	Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision: poua for women and taua for men	Te Aka: taua is grandmother, pōua grandfather, the other way round

How dialect shows in place names

Place names keep dialect forms on the map. The Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 changed a list of official names into dual names, and several carry the southern k: Mount Cook became Aoraki/Mount Cook, the Southern Alps became Southern Alps/Kā Tiritiri o te Moana, and Mount Grey became Mount Grey/Maukatere, with mauka for maunga ‘mountain’. Aoraki is the southern form of Aorangi; the Act’s statement of the iwi’s association with the mountain translates it “Cloud in the Sky”. Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou lists more k names, among them Waitaki, Akaroa, Puketeraki, Moeraki and Rakiura.

The University of Otago’s Hocken Collections are Uare Taoka o Hākena, and the university library Te Pātaka Mātauraka o Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka: taoka and mātauraka are taonga ‘treasure’ and mātauranga ‘knowledge’ with the southern k. Writing about Whanganui, Bauer asked whether broadcasters who copied one dialect would then be expected to say Rangiora with a k. More names are explained in Māori place names.

Standard Māori and the dialects today

Standard written Māori spells most of these differences the same way for everyone. Bauer points out that all Māori speakers write whitu ‘seven’, whare ‘house’ and whanga ‘bay’ with wh, whether they say f, hw or a glottal stop and w. The southern k is the exception that is often written, as the names above show. Spelling decisions belong to Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, whose advice the Geographic Board weighed in the Whanganui case. For wh, Bauer notes, the pronunciation the media use is f, which is what most learners hear first.

That raises a worry Sir Tīmoti Kāretu put to RNZ in 2018: with te reo teachers coming from many tribes, “50 years or 100 years from now there will probably be one standard form of language and dialectical differences will probably disappear.” The iwi are answering it. Kotahi Mano Kāika, launched in 2000 with the Kāi Tahu language strategy, set out to have a thousand Kāi Tahu homes speaking the dialect. It had 400 families signed up within a month, and TE KARAKA reports that it has engaged well over a thousand households in 25 years. In Te Tai Tokerau, Evelyn Tobin hears young Ngāpuhi using the tribal dialect and credits iwi radio with keeping it flowing.

For a learner, the practical rule is simple: learn the standard forms, and expect to hear others. When a speaker says kāika or ’aere, that is their dialect, not an error. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches the standard forms, with tātou, kāinga and whānau among the first words.