Māori language use

• International research on language revitalisation suggests that for minority languages like Māori to survive, intergenerational transmission is required.
• Māori speakers are clustered together and are not spread evenly throughout the Māori population. Forty percent of Māori households have at least one Māori language speaker. In half of these households there is only one speaker, limiting the possibility of language use in the home.
• Thirty-two percent of children or dependants live in households where there is at least one adult speaker of te reo, meaning that acquisition through intergenerational transmission is possible.
• For people with Māori language skills, use of te reo Māori in the home has increased overall since 2001, especially in communications between Māori adults and their children and other adults. While this is a positive indicator of the occurrence of intergenerational transmission, communication patterns in the home have not yet reached a level where the Māori language is considered the primary means of communication.
• The use of the Māori language in the community remains most common in cultural domains. The Māori language is not the primary means of communication in other everyday activities within the community setting.

These findings suggest that ongoing work is required to further stimulate intergenerational transmission among whānau, and community domains where Māori people set the language norms. Given the relatively low starting levels, it will be important to a) promote an incremental approach that values and supports the contributions of all whānau, no matter how small or large; and b) target some key domains and relationships to develop a critical mass of Māori language use.