Māori vs Cook Islands Māori: the same language?

Māori vs Cook Islands Māori is a comparison of two separate languages, not of two dialects of one, though they are each other’s closest relatives and both call themselves simply “Māori”. Much of the basic vocabulary is shared, with a few regular sound changes: New Zealand whare ‘house’ is Cook Islands Māori ʻare, wahine ‘woman’ is vaʻine and kia ora ‘hello’ is kia orāna. The grammar is built the same way. But each has to be learned, and how much of one a speaker of the other understands has not, as far as we can find, ever been measured.

Updated 18 October 2026 · 11 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 short answer

Cook Islands Māori is the indigenous language of the Cook Islands and an official language there, alongside English. Linguists describe it as closely related to, but distinct from, New Zealand Māori. Both are Eastern Polynesian, and most classifications put them, with Tahitian, in the same small branch. A New Zealand Māori speaker will recognise a great many Cook Islands Māori words once a handful of sound rules is known, and the sentence patterns will feel familiar. The two still differ in sounds, spelling, everyday words and greetings, and the Cook Islands language has its own varieties, its own law and its own dictionaries.

Two languages called Māori

In the Cook Islands the language is usually called just Māori or te reo Māori, the same name New Zealand uses for its own. When the two need telling apart, Cook Islanders say te reo Māori Kūki ʻAirani, Cook Islands Māori, and call New Zealand’s language Māori Aotearoa or Māori Niutireni. It is also called te reo Ipukarea, “the language of the homeland”, and te reo tupuna, “the ancestral language”. The country’s own name, Kūki ʻAirani, is a borrowing of the English “Cook Islands”; the dictionary spells it with a plain A, and the Ministry for Pacific Peoples writes it both that way and as Kūki ʻĀirani.

The word itself means the same on both sides. Te Aka gives New Zealand māori as “normal, natural”, and the Rarotongan dictionary gives māori as “of native origin, indigenous”, as opposed to papaʻā, European.

How close are they on the family tree?

Very close. Within Eastern Polynesian, the classifications of Andrew Pawley (1966) and Jeff Marck (2000) put Cook Islands Māori in a subgroup called Tahitic, together with New Zealand Māori and Tahitian. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, places te reo Māori in the same branch, and the Ministry for Pacific Peoples describes Cook Islands Māori as closely related to te reo Māori and to Tahitian. That makes it a nearer relative than Hawaiian, which is set out in Māori vs Hawaiian, and much nearer than Samoan or Tongan, in Māori vs Samoan and Tongan.

There has been plenty of contact along the way. Nicholas notes old and obvious borrowing from Tahitian, especially on ʻAtiu, Maʻuke and Mitiʻaro, and, over the last two hundred years, borrowing from New Zealand Māori, above all among Cook Islanders who have lived in New Zealand.

The sound correspondences

Cook Islands Māori has nine consonants: k, m, n, ng, p, r, t, v and the glottal stop, a catch in the throat like the break in English “uh-oh”, written ʻ. New Zealand Māori writes ten: h, k, m, n, ng, p, r, t, w and wh. Both have the same five vowels, short and long. Three differences do most of the work, and they are regular, word after word.

So the rule of thumb for a New Zealand Māori speaker is short: where you would say h or wh, a Cook Islander makes a glottal stop, and where you say w, they say v. The verb “to go” shows it in a word you hear every day: New Zealand haere ‘to go’ is Cook Islands ʻaere, so a whole sentence can line up word for word:

• New Zealand Māori: Ka hoki māua ki te kāinga. ‘The two of us (not you) are going home’
• Cook Islands Māori: Ka ʻoki māua ki te kāinga.

The dual pronoun māua ‘we two, not you’ and the word for home, kāinga ‘home’, are spelt the same in both languages, and so is the grammar: the particle first, then the verb, then who is doing it. The Cook Islands sentence is the one Wikipedia gives as an example of Cook Islands Māori grammar, without its personal name.

The consonants Cook Islands Māori kept matter as much as the ones it changed. Tahitian, the third member of the branch, turned its ng into a glottal stop: POLLEX gives Tahitian taʻata for “person”, iʻoa for “name” and mauʻa for “mountain”. Cook Islands Māori kept the ng, which is why tangata, ingoa and maunga look exactly like New Zealand Māori on the page.

Same words, different jobs

A shared word does not always mean the same thing. New Zealand aroha ‘love, compassion’ is Cook Islands aroʻa, which Buse’s Rarotongan dictionary glosses as “greet, welcome, offer good wishes” as well as “have pity on, forgive”. The Ministry for Pacific Peoples signs off with kia maʻata te aroʻa, “lots of love”.

The greeting has a history of its own. Savage’s dictionary of Rarotongan, published in 1962, records that the old Rarotongan salutation was kia ora, exactly the New Zealand one, and that after Christianity arrived “the Tahitian form of salutation came into general use, i.e., kia orana.” The modern dictionary analyses orāna as ora, “life, alive, well”, plus the particle na, and its Mangaian entry translates the greeting literally as “may you continue to live”. New Zealand’s kia ora is built from the same ora ‘alive, well’.

The Cook Islands column is the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ language guide. Most of the pairs are the sound rules again: pēhea and pēʻea, haere and ʻaere, noho and noʻo. Thank you is not. Meitaki is the everyday Cook Islands word for “good, well”, and the reply to pēʻea koe? is meitaki ʻua au, “I am well”. Kia manuia, “good luck”, is a common send-off, and a toast. The New Zealand side of every greeting, and when to use which, is in Māori greetings.

One language, many islands

Cook Islands Māori is not uniform. Nicholas, following both scholars and speakers, counts four dialects in the southern islands: Rarotonga, Aitutaki, Mangaia, and Ngā Pū Toru, the shared variety of ʻAtiu, Maʻuke and Mitiʻaro. The differences are mostly in vocabulary, and they show up in very ordinary words:

Even “thank you very much” changes from island to island: meitaki maʻata on Rarotonga, meitaki ʻatupaka on Aitutaki, meitaki rānuinui on ʻAtiu, Maʻuke and Mitiʻaro. Aitutaki’s kāʻore for “no” is close to New Zealand kāore ‘no, not’. New Zealand Māori has regional differences of its own, set out in Māori dialects.

Rarotongan became the standard because of the Bible. The missionaries translated it into Rarotonga’s variety, and the prestige of the Bible made that variety the one used in church and in print on every island; for about a hundred years the others were almost never written down. In outer-island churches the readings and sermons are still often in Rarotongan, while conversation is in the local variety.

The northern atolls are a different story. Manihiki and Rakahanga, and Penrhyn (Tongareva), speak Eastern Polynesian varieties that kept sounds the south lost: “house” is fare on Manihiki and hare on Penrhyn, beside southern ʻare. Pukapuka, in the far north-west of the group, speaks Pukapukan, which is not Eastern Polynesian at all; the Ministry for Pacific Peoples calls it closely related to Samoan. Palmerston Island speaks a variety of English with Cook Islands Māori influences.

Where the accounts differ

Official status, and the New Zealand connection

Cook Islands Māori became an official language of the Cook Islands, with English, under the Te Reo Maori Act 2003. The Act defines the language as “the Maori language (including its various dialects) as spoken or written in any island of the Cook Islands”, deems it to include Pukapukan, and includes Māori that conforms to the national standard approved by Kopapa Reo, the Cook Islands Māori language commission. The Act’s title means “the Māori language”, the same words New Zealand uses for its own.

The Cook Islands have governed themselves since a constitution was promulgated on 4 August 1965, in free association with New Zealand. They are part of the Realm of New Zealand, and Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens, free to live and work in New Zealand. Cook Islands Māori has no official status in New Zealand, although Nicholas points out that it is an indigenous language of the Realm.

Cook Islands Māori in New Zealand

Most Cook Islanders live in New Zealand. At the 2023 census 94,176 people in New Zealand identified as Cook Islands Māori, while the Cook Islands’ own census of 2021 counted 15,040 residents. Far fewer speak the language. In 2023, 8.2 percent of Cook Islands Māori people in New Zealand could speak it. The Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ analysis puts the share at 19 percent in 2001, and among 15- to 29-year-olds it fell from 14 percent to 4 percent over the same years. On the Ministry’s education figures, the number of New Zealand students learning Cook Islands Māori grew from 106 in 2004 to 421 in 2025.

Each year the Ministry for Pacific Peoples runs te ʻEpetoma o te reo Māori Kūki ʻAirani, Cook Islands Māori Language Week, in early August, around Te Maeva Nui, the Cook Islands’ national festival. In 2026 it ran from 2 to 8 August. ʻEpetoma, “week”, comes from the Greek hebdoma. It is a different week from New Zealand’s own Māori Language Week in September, described in Te Wiki o te Reo Māori.

Can New Zealand Māori and Cook Islands Māori speakers understand each other?

Partly, and as far as we can find, no study has measured how much. The one study that tested Polynesian listeners, Jack Ward’s at the University of Hawaiʻi in 1959–61, recorded Rarotongan speakers as well as a Māori speaker, but played the Māori recording only to Hawaiian and Samoan listeners, so this pair was never tested. What that study found for the others is set out in Māori vs Hawaiian.

What there is points both ways. On the side of understanding: the vocabulary overlaps heavily, the sound rules are few and regular, and the grammar matches, so a New Zealand Māori speaker reading Cook Islands Māori, with its glottal stops marked, can work out a great deal. On the other side: Nicholas reports that many older Cook Islands Māori speakers have good New Zealand Māori because most secondary students in the Cook Islands studied it as a school subject before Cook Islands Māori was taught, and then lived with it in New Zealand. In other words, they learned it; it did not come free. Different everyday words, different greetings and a glottal stop in place of every h and wh are a lot to decode at the speed of conversation.

Learning one after the other

If you speak Cook Islands Māori, New Zealand Māori will come quickly: put h or wh back where you have a glottal stop, w where you have v, and most of the grammar is already yours. Which of h and wh a word takes has to be learned word by word, and the Māori pronunciation guide covers how both are said. Going the other way, a New Zealand Māori speaker needs a Cook Islands Māori teacher or dictionary for the words the two languages do not share, starting with meitaki.

Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course teaches New Zealand Māori, in the order its words are most used, with Papa Reo’s native te reo voice on every example.

Sources

1. Nicholas, S. A. (2018). Language Contexts: Te Reo Māori o te Pae Tonga o te Kuki Airani, also known as Southern Cook Islands Māori. Language Documentation and Description 15: 36–64. London: EL Publishing (CC-BY-NC).
2. Dictionary of Cook Islands Languages (Te Ipukarea Society, AUT): Rarotongan entries from Buse and Taringa, Cook Islands Maori Dictionary, and from Savage (1962), A Dictionary of the Maori Language of Rarotonga.
3. Greenhill, S. J. and Clark, R. POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online (Rarotongan from Buse and Savage, New Zealand Māori from Williams and Biggs).
4. Te Aka Māori Dictionary.
5. Ministry for Pacific Peoples (2026). Cook Islands Māori Language Guide: a brief guide to using the Cook Islands Māori language.
6. Ministry for Pacific Peoples. ‘Epetoma o te reo Māori Kūki ‘Airani – Cook Islands Māori Language Week.
7. Ministry for Pacific Peoples (2026). Cook Islands data snapshot: te reo Māori Kūki ‘Āirani speakers in New Zealand, 2001–2023 (Stats NZ IDI census data).
8. Stats NZ, 2023 Census: Pacific people in New Zealand who can speak Cook Islands Māori, via Figure.NZ.
9. Stats NZ. 2023 Census ethnic group summaries: Cook Islands Māori.
10. Te Ao Māori News (6 August 2026). Why Cook Islands Language Week matters in Aotearoa.
11. Ward, J. H. (1962). Mutual intelligibility between certain Polynesian speech communities. MA thesis, University of Hawaiʻi.
12. Higgins, R. and Keane, B. Te reo Māori – the Māori language. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
13. Te Reo Maori Act 2003 (Cook Islands), via the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute.
14. Wikipedia: Cook Islands Māori (dialect table, grammar example, Te Kopapa Reo).
15. Wikipedia: Cook Islands (constitution of 4 August 1965; 2021 census population, from the Cook Islands Statistics Office).