Learn Māori

Te Reo Māori · a free course from absolute beginner to B1 · one lesson a day

Te reo Māori is the indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand and an official language there, heard every day on the marae, in kura kaupapa, on the news and in the names of half the places on the map. A generation of revival has made it a living, growing language again, and learning it is the most direct way into the culture it carries. Every sentence in this course is spoken by Papa Reo, the te reo voice Te Hiku Media built from recordings of native speakers.

What is hard about Māori, and what this course does about it

The sounds are few and regular, so reading aloud comes quickly; what takes work is the grammar, which is built from small particles rather than endings. Ka, kei te, kua and i in front of a verb carry the tense, and the possessives split into a and o categories that English has no feeling for at all. Vowel length changes meaning, so macrons are taught, typed and marked from the first lesson. The course runs from your first word to the end of B1, every lesson written by hand.

What the course covers

The course has 311 lessons written by hand, from your first word to the end of B1 — the explanation, the examples and the questions, not a template filled in. 26 of them are the grammar core: everything you need before the course turns to recombining it, which is the work that carries you to B1. After the last lesson, the daily lesson reviews the B1 lessons.

The first 14 grammar points, in order

Straight from the course's own syllabus. Each gets its own lesson, and comes back in the reading and listening of later ones.

1. Greetings: kia ora, mōrena, tēnā koe/kōrua/koutou — and the macron
2. Introducing yourself: ko … tōku ingoa, and the personal pronouns au/koe/ia
3. Ko sentences: identifying people and things (Ko Mere tēnei, ko wai koe?)
4. He sentences: describing and classifying (He whare tērā, he pai te kai)
5. The articles te and ngā, and how plurals work
6. The present tense with kei te (kei te kai au) and stative feelings (kei te pai ahau)
7. Asking what and who: he aha and ko wai, and answering in kind
8. Asking where with kei hea — and answering with kei
9. Location with kei, i and hei (kei te whare, i te kura)
10. The dual and plural pronouns: tāua/māua, kōrua, rāua; tātou/mātou, koutou, rātou
11. The past tense with i (i haere au ki te kura)
12. The future with ka (ka haere mātou āpōpō)
13. Completed actions with kua (kua mutu te mahi)
14. Ongoing actions with e … ana (e kai ana rātou)

How one lesson works

Around 20–30 minutes at the fullest setting. Three lengths to choose from, and a shorter one spreads each grammar point over more lessons rather than taking the support away.

1. Review first. Every card that is due today comes back before anything new starts — all of them, with no cap, because a cap on reviews is a cap on what you remember.
2. New words. A handful of new words, dealt straight down the frequency list from wherever you got to, each with its recording.
3. The grammar. One point, explained in writing with worked examples and tables, before the questions that test it.
4. Reading. A passage in Māori in three parts, written from words you have already been taught, with comprehension questions.
5. Listening. The same again for the ear, in three parts.
6. Writing. From lesson 7, one task where you produce Māori of your own and get it back marked.

The words, and the order they come in

The course's vocabulary is a frequency list 2,002 words long, and the deck deals it in rank order from word one — so the words you meet first are the ones standing between you and an ordinary sentence. You can read the top of that list without signing up: the most common Māori words. How many do you already know? Take the two-minute Māori vocabulary test.

The course's words and phrases are recorded in a Māori voice — 4,749 clips, counted on the server — and the listening section plays them as connected speech rather than as a word list.

Other courses

• SpanishEspañol
• FrenchFrançais
• ItalianItaliano
• PortuguesePortuguês (Brasil)
• GermanDeutsch
• Mandarin Chinese中文（普通话）
• EsperantoEsperanto
• Shanghainese上海闲话