University of Virginia Library

1. Transitions

Captain James Cook's first visit in 1769 to the islands that were to become New Zealand initiated a process of change that is the focus of the first section of this chapter—it was the first time words in Mäori had been written down, and subsequently printed and published. The second section also relates to how oral language changes and is transformed into print. Together these sections define the two factors unique to the print culture of Aotearoa New Zealand: Mäori language print culture and New Zealand English.

     The first section, 'From Mäori oral traditions to print', reviews the impact on existing Mäori oral culture of the imported print culture—one impact in a period of profound social changes, and one to which Mäori responded with enthusiasm. The section covers how the language became codified, the publication of Mäori oral traditions, Mäori use of writing and print in the 19th century, and an overview of publishing in Mäori and by Mäori through to the present day.

     This approach to the history of Mäori-European interaction from a print culture perspective refers to a wide range of publications, and identifies a number of important areas for further investigation and research. Detailed coverage of specific aspects of Mäori language print culture (e.g. newspapers, literacy programmes) are covered in the later chapters.

     The second section 'New Zealand English' describes the distinctiveness of and changes within our own variety of the English language—as it appears in print, where it responds more slowly to change than spoken New Zealand English. Current lexicographical research is also described, in which a major milestone has been reached in 1997 with the publication of Harry Orsman's long-awaited historical dictionary.

From Mäori oral traditions to print

The many interests of the meeting between Mäori oral society and literacy are reflected in the range of those who write about it: literary historians, linguists, historians, enthusiasts of print and Mäori culture. But theirs have been small studies which amount to a partial knowledge of this encounter, generating a sense of potential. Three issues are pertinent to a review of this literature and contemplation of future study.

     First, the fact that Mäori acquired literacy at a time of colonisation by the British is a critical determinant, but one balanced by the autonomy of Mäori tribal society. Secondly, and a direct result of colonisation, is the fact that Mäori use of writing and print is complicated by two languages. English displaced Mäori as a first language, and Mäori literature is in large part of both languages, in small part in Mäori. The third issue arises from this dual language heritage, for at the time of their first encounter Mäori and English were respectively of oral and literate traditions. Mäori therefore came to experience those two traditions across both languages.

     The assumption of literacy by Mäori is not a straightforward, predictable history, although it compares with other oral peoples' response to literacy. What remains to be known is the situational detail of Mäori literacy, which in turn could assist language survival, would acknowledge the singularity of Mäori literature, and contribute to international scholarship on orality and literacy.

Conventions and authorities for writing and print

There are two kinds of first writing of Mäori, one unsystematic but with human interest in the grappling with transcription of foreign sounds, and the other systematic, a serious, scientific conversion of Mäori to written symbols. The first kind can be found in journals and travel narratives by late 18th-century and early 19th-century explorers, visitors and settlers such as Cook, Dieffenbach, Nicholas. Patrick Smyth refers to sources of such transcriptions in Maori Pronunciation and the Evolution of Written Maori (1946). Those writers, however, were simply collecting information and were neither sufficiently motivated nor informed to organise a spelling system. Purpose in the translation and dissemination of Christian doctrine and access to expertise enabled the missionary community to create an orthography. In an appendix to Judith Binney's life of Thomas Kendall, The Legacy of Guilt (1968), there is a detailed account of his initiation of a writing system. Kendall was a lay-teacher for the Church Missionary Society in the Bay of Islands, and his A Korao no New Zealand (1815) contained the first printed Mäori, and an alphabet. In 1820 Kendall went to England and improved his alphabet by working together with a scholar of oriental languages, Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge University, and Ngäpuhi speakers Hongi Hika and HÖhaia Parata Waikato, and by reference to a vocabulary compiled by other northern speakers Tuai (referred to in some sources as 'Tui') and Titere on a visit to England in 1818. In the course of the missionaries' translations it was modified to the current, economical form for printers, of five vowels and ten consonants.

     There are only brief histories of this remarkable innovation. William Colenso worries over errors in transcription and printing of names in 'On nomenclature' (1883); Johannes Andersen's 'Maori alphabet' (1940) recounts problems with representation of sounds; Peter Lineham in Mission and Moko (1992) and Bible and Society (1996) reports translators', typographers' and readers' difficulties with spelling in the Bible; D.F. McKenzie puts a spare, elegant account of progress to an orthography in Oral Culture, Literacy & Print in Early New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi (1985). There are remarks about the adequacy of the orthography in publications about the language, particularly in translations of 19th-century manuscripts. These offer excellent sources for investigation of whether the spelling system accurately replicated the sounds of Mäori, whether the missionaries' concerns as translators and printers influenced the choice of letters, and how the alphabet affected language use.

     Linguists have drawn attention to the effect of the orthography on dialect, Ray Harlow surveying historical records and contemporary use in 'Regional variation in Maori' (1979). The alphabet assigned fixed values to sounds. Missionary translators would have appreciated this but it precluded representation of phonological differences. Translators and publishers, modelling other literature, possibly corrected local usage before printing—Lineham (1992) mentions Bible translators' disagreements over dialect. The first printed Scriptures (widely circulated) were mainly of the similar dialects of Ngäpuhi and Waikato; this language has often been asserted as classical Mäori and has consequently influenced speech and writing. Writing and particularly print therefore accentuated a uniform rather than diverse language. Speech, however, can also cause change in dialect, while writing may have the value of preserving it. For the Chatham Island people's Moriori language (which differs from Mäori in pronunciation of some vowels and consonants), writing came too late. Written records from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are examined by Ross Clark in 'Moriori and the Maori: the linguistic evidence' (1994). The greatest part of the extant record was written down some 30 years after the 1835 invasion and subjugation of the Moriori by the Taranaki people whose own dialect modified the Moriori language.

     The standardised spelling created some difficulty in comprehension, as is suggested by a rare printed example of South Island Mäori, very likely produced by the Wesleyan Rev. James Watkin from his Waikouaiti parish, and published in 1841. Watkin had found that the Scriptures supplied from the northern mission were not understood by people in his locality, and he adjusted the alphabet to express their sounds. Harlow includes a facsimile of Watkin's work in Otago's First Book (1994), and a discussion of his spelling system and South Island vocabulary in A Word-list of South Island Maori (1985).

     The orthography represented the language sufficiently, however, for missionary translations and teaching of literacy. Mäori evidently found it satisfactory for they used it effectively from the late 1830s, but their writing suggests that a more accurate alphabet might have resulted had the missionaries worked with them in refining it. Nineteenth-and 20th-century writing shows adjustment to the orthography, a claim to accuracy and pride in dialect. In a transcription and translation of Te Kähui Kararehe's late 19th-century writing (1993), Ailsa Smith notes that he resisted convention and wrote in the characteristic sounds of his Taranaki speech. Evidence that much writing was done last century is suggested by (little used) attempts to abbreviate it to a shorthand, as described in Hicks's Maori Shorthand (1894) and H.W. Williams's A System of Shorthand for Maori (1896).

     Summarising the history of Mäori in 'The Maori language past and present' (1968), Bruce Biggs points out that the alphabet was deficient until vowel quantity was marked, for length of vowel sound can distinguish meaning. He remarks elsewhere that Mäori introduced the double vowel to signify length as it occurs, although not consistently, in their 19th-century manuscripts. This is the one unresolved problem in what is otherwise a conveniently phonetic writing system. Nineteenth-and early 20th-century grammars and dictionaries experimented with different accents for long vowels, but in the 20th century the lack of accepted practice led to controversy as to whether vowel length should be marked at all, or by a double vowel or macron. As the language has come to be printed outside academia (where the double vowel was in vogue) the macron has been preferred. This has caused some typographical problems since not all fonts allow for it, and unsightly alternative diacritics have been used in some publications. It seems likely that in future the macron will be looked for in correct spelling of Mäori.

     Although accomplished readers of the symbols of art and landscape, Mäori had had no form of alphabetic script and the transition of the oral language to a written form (in conjunction with the arrival of foreigners and colonisation) brought far-reaching changes to the content and traditions of language use which have yet to be fully documented. Two examples of change are neologisms and public access to traditional knowledge. Writing out the oral vocabulary did not alter meaning, but contact with Päkehä brought other words into it—either additional meanings were attributed to old words to signify new concepts and objects, or English words were transliterated to Mäori sounds. Such additions, which may have originated orally, were reinforced in the literature. Another extraordinary result of writing was that traditional knowledge could be disseminated far beyond the reaches of a tribal audience. Access to oral or written texts may be circumscribed, by selection of an audience, by limited print runs. But it was a feature of Mäori oral traditions to be closely controlled by the tribal group; with writing they could be communicated well outside its boundaries. Place names provide a case in point. Personal to and resonant of tribal life, they came to be spelled out on signposts, buildings, maps—the spelling and pronunciation of them becoming an issue of national debate in the 20th century. In recent times some tribes have refrained from published documentation of names which indicate sacred sites or resources.

     Conventions associated with writing, and especially print, came with the orthography. For instance, consistency in spelling and punctuation, correctness in grammar, precision in word meaning, the layout of a written text—titles, chapters, paragraphing. In addition there were numbers, symbols and systems relating to money, weight, and time. Some of these had been specified in pamphlets and workbooks printed for missionary teaching and were apparent in published literature. But standards were made explicit, and served tuition in literacy and the progress of a literature, by grammars and dictionaries. These too were new to Mäori, for the oral traditions did not record definitions of words or description of language components and structure. Both grammars and dictionaries could usefully be studied for their influence on usage, each providing evidence of its time, and bearing an authority which is often, though not always correctly, associated with print.

     Clergy compiled the first published grammars and dictionaries; Mäori were sometimes advisers. The first was Kendall and Lee's Grammar and Vocabulary (1820), the next the Rev. Robert Maunsell's insightful Grammar (1842). The Williams family's contribution to publishing the lexicon and grammar is remarkable: William Williams's 1844 Dictionary of the New Zealand Language and a Concise Grammar ; several editions of W.L. Williams's important First Lessons in the Maori Language (1862); seven editions from the 1844 dictionary to H.W. Williams's Dictionary of the Maori Language (1971) which remains unequalled.

     Dictionaries are also testimony to how the language has been used: most have been Mäori-English, none all in Mäori. The English-Mäori lexicon was properly established with Biggs's 1981 Complete English-Maori Dictionary , and enlarged by H.M. Ngata's English-Maori Dictionary (1993)—the first compiled by a Mäori and which records, without explicit intention, his Ngäti Porou dialect. This and other contemporary dictionaries emphasise the spoken language; new words appear in them many of which have long been used in speech, but print has not yet fully captured colloquial usage, transliterations, neologisms, and dialect.

     The first Mäori to produce a grammar was H.M. Stowell with the Maori-English Tutor and Vade Mecum (1913). In the 20th century, linguist Bruce Biggs produced the influential Let's Learn Maori (1969), which became the first grammar in Mäori when translated by Cleve Barlow (1990). It is a sign of language loss rather than of use of literacy that there is no other grammar in Mäori. In the 20th century Mäori published grammars with the aim of assisting language learning. Mäori had declined as a first language as a result of colonisation's impact—government policy from 1867 that teaching be in English; the move since the 1950s by Mäori away from their tribal communities where the language and oral traditions were habitual, to towns where English and literacy predominated. Print, which at least by association with colonisation had contributed to the decline of Mäori, was paradoxically used as an essential medium of instruction to revive it. Indeed it might be argued that a recurring, sometimes sole, reason for Mäori using print has been for survival—linguistic, political and cultural survival. Mäori compilers of 20th-century language tutors added a new dimension in recording dialect (previously incidental in grammars) simply by using their own language, as in Hoani Waititi's Te Rangatahi series (1970) and Tïmoti Käretu's Te Reo Rangatira (1974) for Ngäti Porou and Tühoe.

     The reduction in use of spoken and written Mäori over a long period is indicated by the purposeful creation in the late 20th century of a vocabulary for inventions, technological, scientific, and legal terms. The Mäori Language Commission (established by statute in 1987 to promote use of the language) created some 5,500 words by attribution of new meanings to old words and transliterated borrowing from English, published in Te Matatiki (1996). Despite common use in 19th-century writing, where possible the Commission avoided transliterations. Other registers of vocabulary are concordances, of the Bible by Barlow (1990), and of two classics of Mäori oral literature by Harlow, A Name and Word Index to 'Nga Mahi a nga Tupuna' (1990) and, together with A.H.F. Thornton, A Name and Word Index to 'Nga Moteatea' (1986). These, a very studied use of print, will serve scholars and, like the grammars and dictionaries, may help the language survive, at worst only in print.

Printed works in Mäori to the 1850s

In the period up to 1850 the Church Missionary Society principally, but also the Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Missions, carried out the printing in New Zealand (and overseas) of a considerable amount of religious material and some government documents in Mäori. Two printers are often recalled in histories of this time. William Yate was the first to print the language in New Zealand, in 1830 at Kerikeri, producing hymns and a catechism. William Colenso, commissioned by the Church Missionary Society as printer at Paihia in 1834, put out translated parts of the Bible in 1835, and took on a considerable role in the printing of Mäori, as his own published writings and biography relate.

     Stories of the mission presses (Mäori were employed in some), the difficulties associated with production (the small number of letters must have been some relief), and details of the output of literature in Mäori, are quite well covered in diverse sources, but could be covered in one specialist history. Colenso gives a personal account of his work in Fifty Years Ago in New Zealand (1888), A.W. Reed a spirited response (1936), Andersen a picturesque history in 'Early printing in New Zealand' (1940a), and D.F. McKenzie (1985) a selective guide to the period. The recent restoration by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust of the Pompallier building in Russell, which recreates the French Catholic mission press environment effectively, is described in detail in New Zealand Historic Places (no.44, Nov. 1993, pp.4-36). At the turn of the century there was reflection back to this time in Hill's 'The early days of printing in New Zealand' (1900), Hocken's 'Some account of the beginnings of literature in New Zealand' (1900), and the separate Mäori section in his Bibliography of the Literature Relating to New Zealand (1909). The fullest information is to be read from H.W. Williams's Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900 (1924). The Introduction informs about the presses; the bibliographic entries are detailed, with imprint, dates, production numbers, physical character, and content. The chronological arrangement enables an easy view

of the scope of material of any one time. (There are two supplements, neither complete, by Williams (1928) and A.D. Sommerville (1947); an augmented edition is in progress at the National Library.)

     Up to 1850, virtually all the printed material available to Mäori was of Christian doctrine—chapters and books of the Bible, hymns, orders of service, catechisms, almanacs, and religious tracts. It was also used as examples in printed workbooks and grammars. Although a literature of translation and esoteric subject matter, it is of worth to linguists, theologians and historians. Distribution of and response to this literature are documented in Michael Jackson's 'Literacy, communications and social change' (1975), Lineham's accounts of biblical translations from the mission presses and the British and Foreign Bible Society (1992, 1996), and McKenzie's review of Mäori literacy (1985).

     In this era of British aspirations to govern Aotearoa, two documents in Mäori, the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Waitangi, came to have extraordinary significance for the future, and invite further print-centred review. The Declaration of Independence was printed, in Mäori and English, in 1835 at the request of James Busby the British Resident, and some 34 chiefs consented to it—four signed their names, others made a mark. The signatories were designated, by that act of writing, the United Tribes of New Zealand. The Declaration was printed twice and circulated for others to sign. It arose partly out of an earlier document, an 1831 Mäori petition for protection sent to King William IV which 13 northern chiefs signed. This public document of government between Mäori and Päkehä has a late 20th-century sequel in David Simmons's booklet Ko Huiarau (1991)—which affirms the contemporary role of the United Tribes and the Declaration.

     The Treaty of Waitangi has been the more powerful example of print, symbolising relations between Mäori and Päkehä. Most Mäori literature to the 1850s remains a rarity of religious or academic import. The Treaty has been constantly and radically an active inheritance of print, as Claudia Orange's Treaty of Waitangi (1987) chronicles. The complexity of the Treaty meeting between oral and literate peoples has been convincingly portrayed by McKenzie (1985). The signatories to the document have been presented graphically in MÏria Simpson's Ngä Tohu o te Tiriti: Making a Mark , which was published in 1990 (the 150th anniversary of the Treaty) in conjunction with a National Library exhibition entitled 'Ngä kupu körero, the people of the Treaty speak'. The book with its various signatures and the exhibition title encapsulate the continuing dynamic of the oral-literate interaction over the Treaty. It is sometimes said that the Treaty is always speaking; it has certainly been source of long argument between Mäori and Päkehä. Perhaps print exacerbated this. If it had been an oral contract its very text and meaning would have been changed according to the time. As a static printed document it raises expectations of a complete understanding of what it meant in the past which, as Bruce Biggs proposes in an aptly entitled 'Humpty-Dumpty and the Treaty of Waitangi' (1989), is unrealistic.

     The continuing print legacy from the Treaty makes history. There is a rare published statement about it in Mäori by Apirana Ngata (1922). There is a literature from the Waitangi Tribunal (set up in 1975 to hear claims against the Crown for breaches of the Treaty): documentation from hearings published in microform, findings in print. The 1990 commemoration prompted special funding from Government for Mäori literature, and the National Library's informal publication of selected manuscripts and commitment to recataloguing and describing printed Mäori. The Treaty's imprint, the text or comment about it in Mäori, embellishes a range of objects from art works to clothing.

     After 1840 and the assumption of British government there were other translated documents of government—proclamations, public letters, Acts, the Mäori Gazette, and instructions about European life—portions of Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress , information about medicine, the keeping of bees and cultivation of tobacco, histories of Britain, of Peter the Great. All this is recorded in Williams's Bibliography , as are the government newspapers in Mäori begun in 1842 and a substantial body of print of considerable historical merit. (A microform edition of extant Mäori newspapers has made them accessible and a bilingual bibliography is in progress at the National Library.)

     The primary purpose of printing up to 1850 was to distribute the literature of church and state; it was one means by which these institutions advised and legitimated their presence. Such use of print invites examination of whether it was a tool of colonisation, a point touched on by Kuni Jenkins in 'Te ihi te mana te wehi o te tuhi 1814-55' (1991). As religious, bureaucratic, linguistic literature, it is, in retrospect at least, not very attractive. Nothing at the time was printed of Mäori knowledge, history, or religion, nothing familiar which Mäori could turn to when fascination with the new, foreign literature waned. But from the early 1850s the oral traditions came into print and Mäori took up publishing.

Mäori oral traditions in print

The history of publication of Mäori oral traditions, of the narratives, songs, sayings, and genealogies handed down over generations is, as some historians of literacy might expect, marked by length and quality of experience of literacy. The transition of the oral traditions to print would make a fascinating history. There is ample material for such research, as Williams's Bibliography , C.R.H. Taylor's excellent Bibliography of Publications on the New Zealand Maori (1972) and Jane McRae's 'Mäori literature: a survey' (1991) attest. It would be important to an examination of Mäori response to writing and print, and might support McKenzie's contention that the nature of Mäori literacy needs reassessment (1985). At least with regard to traditional knowledge, Mäori have retained many customs of an oral tradition.

     When the oral traditions have come to print there have been mediators between the very different repositories of the Mäori memory and literature. Päkehä published the first books of oral traditions in the 19th century from manuscripts written by Mäori. They encouraged Mäori into print as contributors to serials in the 19th century, and as authors of books and journals in the 20th century. By that time Mäori were encouraging Mäori into print. In the 19th century one motive for publication by Päkehä was to preserve the traditional knowledge which must have seemed dangerously ephemeral, not only oral but of a dying race. But there was also intelligent pleasure in the artistic compositions and some, like the typographer Coupland Harding who made it the subject of an article in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (1892), appreciated the comparison between Mäori, Greek and Roman oral literature.

     Sir George Grey was the first mediator. In the 1850s he produced four books of songs, narratives and sayings, all in Mäori. The sayings also had English translations and the narratives a separate English edition. He was therefore the first to decide how the oral texts, the form of songs, sayings and genealogies, should be laid out in print. (Some scholars of oral traditions suggest that the way in which narratives are printed may alter how they are understood.) Grey was also a source of printed oral texts, the reason for speeches and songs in Maori Mementos (Davis, 1855) which were composed when he left the country in 1853. The relationship between newly literate Mäori and Päkehä publishers and Mäori opinion on this exercise are exemplified in Jenifer Curnow's 'Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke: his life and work' (1985) about one of Grey's principal writers, and Michael Reilly's articles (1989) concerning John White's collecting for his six-volume bilingual Ancient History of the Maori (1887-90).

     The complexities of the shift to print can be envisaged from the history of S. Percy Smith's bilingual The Lore of the Whare-wananga (1913, 1915) of edited versions of manuscripts believed to be transcripts of teachings by Wairarapa elders in the 1860s made to preserve their knowledge. The provenance of these manuscripts and the scribal role in copying them are explored in Biggs and Simmons's 'The sources of "The Lore of the Whare-wananga"' (1970), and will be further elaborated by Agathe Thornton in a forthcoming book with interesting comparison with a similar transition in Greek oral traditions. These studies, along with evidence from unpublished manuscripts, also raise questions about the work of Mäori scribes apprenticed to elders or Päkehä publishers.

     If bibliographers are correct in saying that form affects meaning, then there is reason to examine the impact of print on the oral traditions. A little of this has been done. Close comparison of Grey's published narratives with the Mäori manuscripts reveals him as an intrusive editor by late 20th-century standards. Perhaps to please readers unfamiliar with oral style, he changed words, names, grammar, the order of events. Editing for a reader shifts the emphasis from the ear to the eye, and the isolated reader requires an explicitness unusual to the oral texts which were typically, although comprehensibly to tribal kin, oblique and elliptical. The public purpose of print pressed changes on that style. Print also brought translation to the oral traditions; it is rare for the oral literature to be only in Mäori. Grey started that way, although he wrote prefaces in English. Almost all subsequent work has been bilingual, or a new literature retold in English. This rewriting began at the turn of the century and attracted Päkehä enthusiasts of Mäori culture (A.W. Reed was a prolific writer), but little has been done since the 1970s. For most publishing an English rather than Mäori readership has been expected.

     Publication also saw a shift from a tribal to a consolidated Mäori content, and therefore fragmentation of the unified local tradition. As Simmons has shown (1966), Grey began what was to become a common practice of knitting together tribal versions of stories into a printed Mäori whole. As the alphabet obscured dialect, so print masked tribal identity in the oral traditions and this prevailed until later this century when Mäori began their own publishing. The literary practice of subject studies also saw intricately interconnected tribal knowledge excerpted, in Mäori or English, to illustrate ethnographic and other literature about Mäori society. Tribal control over traditional knowledge was relinquished with its transition to the very accessible medium of print.

     Publishing of the oral traditions ensued from another practice of literacy, analysis and commentary. By this kind of work linguists and literary historians such as Bruce Biggs, Margaret Orbell and Agathe Thornton have accorded these texts the interest given to classics of European literature, but few Mäori have taken up such analysis. Some have objected to it, claiming that it exploits and misrepresents the oral traditions. Government agencies such as the Mäori Land Court have been said to have forced written and printed recording of the oral evidence of tribal history. But that record in turn has been used by Mäori for their own publications— Karanga Hokianga (1986) is the Motuti community's edited version of court-related committee minute books.

     How Mäori regarded, if they purchased, whether they read, early printed works of oral traditions remains to be known. Many provided material for books but were selective about what they offered. For some there were symbolic and practical aspects to publication—pride, preservation. Mäori first published their traditional texts in 19th-century Mäori newspapers and journals. At the turn of the century both Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute and the Journal of the Polynesian Society had Mäori contributors, often in partnership with Päkehä translators such as S. Percy Smith and Elsdon Best who were instrumental in this publishing. In the 1920s the Board of Mäori Ethnological Research started a journal, Te Wananga , with the express intention of printing traditions, although it ran only two issues.

     The production of books by Mäori has been limited and invariably the work of Mäori scholars, knowledgeable elders or those whose professions—in the church, university, government—required literate scholarship. This raises interesting questions about the nature of Mäori literacy, of the kind explored in Norman Simms's Points of Contact (1991). Early in the century Apirana Ngata of Ngäti Porou made an exceptional contribution to the oral literature. Maybe it was, as Johannes Andersen put it, his 'scientific mind and literary spirit', as well as his desire to revive the oral arts, that led him to collect hundreds of songs and chants for publication. Ngata tested out his enterprise by publishing first in instalments in Te Toa Takitini and the Journal of the Polynesian Society between 1924 and 1951. The three volumes of translated and annotated songs, Nga Moteatea (1959-70), resulted after another scholar, Pei Te Hurinui Jones of Ngäti Maniapoto, carried on the work after Ngata's death. Of all the oral traditions the songs are most visible in writing and print. There are hundreds in manuscripts, typescripts assist groups learning them; books record and analyse them; oral archives keep them. Yet as Mervyn McLean notes in his study Maori Music (1996), songs are commonly learned from individuals, and for some there are rituals to follow in the copying and use of song books. However, some composers have refused to have their compositions published.

     Since Grey's 1857 collection, there has been regular publication of lists of sayings by Mäori and Päkehä, a major bilingual collection being published in parts by Neil Grove and Hirini Moko Mead (1994). Narratives published by Mäori have usually been from their own tribes: Anaru Reedy's annotated transcription and translation of ancestral writing Ngä Körero a Mohi Ruatapu (1993), Jones and Biggs's Nga Iwi o Tainui (1995). These printed reproductions of the ancient texts recall the repetition of an oral tradition, but do not have the creative reworking that characterised oral performance. There is a little such innovation, as in the rewriting of the Täwhaki legend (in Mäori and English) by Hirini Moko Mead (1996). For this kind of publishing a primary consideration has been to support language learning, a secondary one to preserve the knowledge, a third to attract general interest.

     There is no way of knowing whether, the circumstances being different, Mäori would have printed more or less of their traditional knowledge. There is still adherence to the thinking and ways of an oral tradition. Few Mäori have sought to publish their manuscript histories, perhaps because print serves a public who has long been indifferent to Mäori culture, perhaps because they are family histories. There is sentimental attachment to the voice and face-to-face communication, a point made by Ngata in 'The Maori and printed matter' (1940). As the marae exemplifies, there is a preference for company, exchange of talk and performance, over the silent, solitary occupation of reading about traditions. Print cannot equal the warmth and intimacy of the human voice or the association of words on the breath which come from and link to the gods and ancestral world. But literacy combines with that tradition: elders use books to supplement their knowledge, quotations from the Bible and other literature are heard in songs and speeches. A danger in this interaction is that, as much of the oral literature are out of print, and the language and oral tradition are not sufficiently habitual to maintain the texts, they may disappear in the gap between orality and literacy.

     Mäori react variously to publication. The most conservative refuse. Others value it as a means of preservation, a voice to future generations, a way of communicating world wide. More research could identify the scope and aspirations of Mäori publishing, and discover whether the relatively limited publishing is a consequence of a recent history of literacy, colonisation, language loss, or religious views about the traditional knowledge, and whether use of print is essentially response to a crisis, to save this knowledge for the next generations of Mäori. If this is the motive, it is quite different from an active choice of print to publish for common knowledge.

Mäori use of writing and print to 1900

Mäori use of writing and print in the 19th century occurred in a time of profound, often aggressive change. If writing had been introduced without colonisation and Mäori had chosen at their own pace and in their own way how, even if, to use these arts, there would have been a different story. But very soon after the introduction of writing, Christianity and British government were exerting considerable force on their way of life. Undoubtedly Mäori were influenced, maybe indoctrinated by print but they were not passive in reply to it, they argued the reasoning in Scriptures with missionaries and challenged government by their own use of it.

     Mäori began reading and writing in the early 1800s. There is ample account of and some disagreement about their literacy. Parr's articles (1961, 1963) contain a wealth of primary sources; Jackson investigated literacy's impact on social life (1975), and McKenzie's Treaty-based thesis (1985) was acute and, as it turned out, contentious. His argument that the historical record had exaggerated the extent and sophistication of Mäori literacy drew replies from historians that he underestimated it. Lyndsay Head and Buddy Mikaere's 'Was 19th-century Maori society literate?' (1988) brought specific examples of use by way of rebuttal. This clash of scholarly opinion invites further investigation of the particulars of Mäori literacy. There is material enough for it and an extensive literature of comparison—from Polynesia no more thorough a model than Niko Besnier's study on literacy in Nukulaelae, Tuvalu (1995).

     There are ample records, however, to leave no doubt as to Mäori people's discriminating and efficient use of literacy and literature in their own language in the 19th century. Excitement over, enchantment with, demand for, and intelligent reply from reading and books are reported in the studies referred to above. But more might be discovered about the habits of readers, for instance, what was read most, at all, of the government papers and Christian tracts listed in Williams's excellent guide as to what was available to read. When and where did people read? What response was there to an inanimate object rather than a person, informing the solitary reader? Did the predominance of Christian, of foreign literature estrange the reader from their own society? Most reported interaction over literacy has been about missionaries and Mäori, Päkehä writers and Mäori colleagues, chiefs and government, with less about that between Mäori and Mäori, individual and tribe, elder and young.

     The Bible, the sole literature for many for a long time (well into the 20th century it was the only literature in Mäori some read), provides one measure of response. Mäori may have found it attractive because of similarities to the oral traditions—the genealogies, psalms, moral, mythological stories, the rhetorical, oblique, poetical mode. Lineham has relevant information on acquisition, use and reaction to the Bible (1992, 1996). For instance, Mäori disliked the new format of the 1884 edition and asked for a return to the old version. Was this a conservatism from the predictably patterned oral compositions or because it changed sounds, rhythms, words of memorised passages, or a reaction to layout and font? It was characteristic of 19th-century sensibility that translations of the Bible were carried out by Päkehä without Mäori engaged or (if so) acknowledged. This exclusion of Mäori from publishing intended for them continued for a long time.

     That the Bible was well read and understood is evident from reports of memorising of long passages, and from quotations and allusions to characters, stories and Christian morality in songs, stories, articles and speeches. As histories of these individuals and movements recount, the Bible's deepest impression is to be found in the writings of 19th-century prophets and printed records of syncretic religious movements—Te Ua Haumëne and the Pai Märire, Te Kooti and the Ringatü Church, Täwhiao and the King Movement. The Bible is said to have been the only literature which the prophet Te Whiti kept, but he and Tohu banned the Päkehä's tool of writing at their Parihaka community in the late 19th century. (Mervyn McLean, collecting songs in the 1960s for his work on Mäori music (1996), found some Taranaki informants illiterate as a result of this proscription.) The Bible may have also been read without religious reference, as a good story; it was not always read with the result that missionaries wished. Some Mäori revered it as the repository of sacred knowledge, others' use was entirely secular. A story often recalled, perhaps for its irreverence or sense of justice, is of the Bible's paper used for cartridges. As a book it retains a special status because of its language which is often regarded as exemplary Mäori, despite some curious ways of expressing the cryptic content.

     The missionaries refrained from producing reading which might distract their pupils from the faith. But from the late 1840s other literature became available—grammars and dictionaries, books of the oral traditions, the government's assortment. How much of this Mäori read might be gauged from references to it in their writing. Mäori read government, church and their own newspapers, as is apparent from correspondence in them. Letters also attest to a Mäori readership of late 19th-century journals, although it is noticeable that these are from tribal leaders, colleagues of Päkehä publishers of traditions, those in the church or prominent in government. The general Mäori population's reading habits may have been different. A survey of reading would also refer to government literature, the Gazette, Acts, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR) , printed reports of meetings, Parliamentary debates, and, from the 1860s, the literature associated with the Native Land Court. Since this was all vital to political contest, it was possibly as well as if not more widely read than the Bible.

     Exceptional evidence of how and what Mäori wrote after first acquiring this skill lies in the large extant stock of 19th-century Mäori letters and manuscripts. Large collections are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, the Hocken Library in Dunedin, the Auckland Public and Auckland Museum Libraries, smaller collections in university and provincial libraries, and also in family and tribal possession. There has been some publication from them; much remains unpublished.

     Letters dated from the 1830s offer outstanding material for enquiry into Mäori use of writing and print. The popularity of letter-writing is noted in all the studies of literacy cited above. Pleasure in conversation with those at a distance led to letters being delivered on paper, slate, leaves. As personal, individual examples of writing they provide evidence of use of the orthography, representation of dialect, development of a writing style—letters often follow the formalities of oratory (as heard in speeches on the marae), beginning with traditional greetings, closing with a song. The topics of letters are also instructive. They were a means of expressing personal feelings, of making requests (often for pens, paper, ink, books), and especially of discussing political matters. Formal and informal letters in Mäori can be found in great number in the papers of officials of church and government—Bishop

Selwyn, Sir George Grey, Sir Donald McLean, for instance. Opinion was also put in written and printed petitions (recorded in AJHR ), and in letters to newspapers and journals. The sense of an audience in this public readership brought rhetorical strategies to pen; argument, challenge and provocation typical to oral performance were transferred to a written forum. Letters have been reproduced in published histories and in Porter and Macdonald's anthology of women's letters (1996).

     Another way in which Mäori used writing was to record domestic matters. There are diaries and personal records of monies, family celebrations, meetings, problems. There are biographical details about family members—for example, an account of his life dictated in 1845 by Te Rauparaha to his son Tämihana Te Rauparaha in the papers of Sir George Grey. There are travel accounts: a diary by Rënata Kawepö of Ngäti Kahungunu, of a journey across the country with Bishop Selwyn between 1843-44, is reproduced in Helen Hogan's Renata's Journey (1994a) and accounts of other journeys are examined in her PhD thesis (1994b). Such annotated translations of 19th-century writing—as Curnow's of Te Rangikäheke's writing (1985) and Smith's of Te Kähui Kararehe's (1993)—make comment on how Mäori used the orthography and adjusted the oral style, and are essential sources for a history of response.

     Especially important is the writing which records the oral traditions, the copies that were made of songs, genealogies, sayings, histories, and the explanations of customs and rituals. From the late 1840s Mäori recorded their traditions either because they saw the oral practice changing or because they enjoyed writing out the memorised texts. Some did this entirely for their own use and many such records have stayed at home, some have been delivered over to public archives. Others were encouraged by friendship, money, pens and paper, to supply interested Päkehä, and their writing remains in the papers of, for example, Sir George Grey, John White, Elsdon Best, who published from them.

     Mäori created many written records in response to government, possibly so time-consuming an occupation that it obviated other uses of literacy. Their own political organisations generated letters, circulars, minutes of meetings, submissions to government. Private minuting of Mäori Land Court sittings and committees became precious books of family history, copies often made or new information added with each generation (and this writing continues). The Court (like the contemporary Waitangi Tribunal), in defining title to land required oral witness which it minuted, confirming in writing what had been known in the oral record. 'Mäori, literacy and the Land Court' is one among many possible titles for study.

     Nineteenth-century Mäori wrote for numerous reasons, each an object of interest, together an informative history. They wrote as memory, to record daily activities, to instruct the next generations; they wrote as a social pleasure —to friends, to work out problems of arithmetic (and later to record commercial activities); they wrote to satisfy others' desire for knowledge—sometimes in this they wrote for money; they wrote as a matter of political acumen.

     Active, autonomous use of print began for Mäori with the publication of newspapers as a direct answer to the government papers. A history of these newspapers would be timely, for they are an unusual source of Mäori opinion and activities. Williams gives details about many in his Bibliography . Articles about Mäori printers (there was an interesting conceit amongst some 19th-century Päkehä printers to transliterate their names to Mäori) and presses record something of the newspaper history: W.J. Cameron's 'A printing press for the Maori people' (1958), Andersen's 'Maori printers and translators' (1940), Jackson (1975) also refer to them. None can resist the famous story of the King of Austria's gift of a press to the King Movement, the publication of the paper Te Hokioi o Niu Tireni (1862-63), the government's counter to it Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke (1863) and Rewi Maniapoto's removal of the press on which it was produced. It reveals each side's view of the power of the press.

     A Päkehä, C.O.B. Davis, was instrumental in encouraging Mäori to collect money for a press and production of papers. Several independent papers were printed between 1857 and the turn of the century, some short-lived because of insufficient funds. (Of religious newspapers produced last century, some had Mäori ministers as editors.) Apart from the occasional Päkehä editor these papers were the work of Mäori and were a highly pragmatic means of putting opinion to government and reporting on politics. They were also generally informative, with correspondence, local and international news, accounts from the oral traditions, advertisements. Political movements, too, engaged in newspaper production. The Mäori Parliament put out a newspaper and recorded its proceedings in print. The King movement printed a newsletter Te Paki o Matariki (1891-) to report on its activities and interchanges with government. Andersen described its decorative masthead as an example of 'Maori typographical ingenuity'—perhaps the starting point for further investigation into Mäori printers and typesetting.

     Mäori use of writing and print in the 19th century was apposite and gradual, a response to both internal cultural change and external government. In some situations Mäori were fast and focused in using literacy to contend with settlers and government; in others, as with the oral traditions, they were slower and considered. By the end of the century, with the growing ascendancy of English, Mäori were becoming dependent on literacy at least in that language. But practices of the oral traditions remained—the oral arts on the marae, the oral communication of traditional knowledge (despite recording it on paper) in tribal meetings or from elders to the young, all continued into the 20th century.

Publishing in the 20th century

There could be interesting histories of Mäori publishing in the 20th century which address matters such as the range and style of publications, the individuals and tribes who produced them, the intended and actual readership, the extent of Mäori literacy, what education initiatives—the Köhanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa Mäori and tribal universities—have brought to print, what publication tells of the future of the language. This research would inform current thinking about language survival and identify future publications.

     There are a number of ways in which a Mäori literature with its own emphases and characteristics has come to national notice in the 20th century. Researchers have learnt of its range through Taylor's comprehensive bibliography (1972). The outcome of a librarian's knowledge, like many books in this area it arose from a scholarly interest in the language and culture. The inclusion of McRae's survey in the 1991 Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English also singled out the literature as a special yet integral part of national publishing. This kind of juxtaposition of English and Mäori literature has rarely occurred—the 1980s Penguin anthologies of New Zealand poetry with songs in Mäori and English are other examples. The rarity derives in part from the fact that there is little public appreciation of this literature. Until very recently it was not taught as part of school and university curricula. It is not uncommon to hear or read in letters to the newspaper, opinion of the kind which, it is said, led to the rejection of Apirana Ngata's recommendation in 1925 that the language be a subject for the BA at the University of New Zealand—that there is no Mäori literature.

     The shift to greater awareness of this literature might be attributed to Mäori themselves who, since the 1970s, have strongly asserted their cultural identity and set out to reclaim a cultural heritage diminished by colonisation. This has involved extensive research into family and tribal history for personal satisfaction and for submission of claims on land and possessions to the Waitangi Tribunal. Schools and universities have responded to this cultural renaissance by tuition in Mäori language and subjects, thus generating a demand for literature for teaching. The guardians of print, librarians, have likewise turned attention to accumulation, preservation and access to Mäori literature.

     Increased demand for Mäori materials especially by Mäori researchers has led to better cataloguing of them and to appointment of specialist librarians. There has been published documentation of collections, National Archives' Guide to Mäori Sources (1995) and Curnow's catalogue of manuscripts in the Auckland Museum Library, Ngä Pou ärahi (1995). Computerised databases for popular materials such as the Mäori Land Court minute books are also underway. Moreover, in the last decade many Mäori have been employed as librarians or as elder experts to advise on collections. They have encouraged Mäori into libraries and reminded libraries of their obligations to this unique literature. More has been communicated in the press and on television about this part of the nation's heritage, especially about the manuscripts. Such developments have given rise to new publishing.

     In terms of preferred publications, the 20th century is like the 19th in that serials retain an important place. The churches' continued acknowledgement of the language is expressed in periodicals. Meeting religious and secular interests, and all in Mäori, some ran on from last century, others started anew, but circulation of them ceased around the 1960s: Te Toa Takitini from the Church of England and the Presbyterian Te Waka Karaitiana are well known examples. The Journal of the Polynesian Society saw most participation by Mäori and of Mäori material around the turn of the century and up to the 1950s. Cultural and linguistic custom, historical traditions, contemporary issues were the subject of articles and debate between Mäori and Päkehä subscribers. Since then Mäori content has been slight and from academics. Other journals have published articles and oral texts in the language but, like the Journal of the Polynesian Society , have been primarily in English: Te Ao Hou (1952-75) from the Mäori Affairs Department; Te Karanga (1985-90) produced by subscriptions to the Canterbury Mäori Studies Association; He Pukenga Körero (1995-) from Massey University's Mäori Studies Department; the glossy magazine Mana (1993-) an independent Mäori publication.

     In the late 20th century there has been a resurgence of newspapers. They are regionally or tribally based and report local and national news. There is also an occasional serialised literature in Mäori—pamphlets, booklets, newsletters. In these later serials there is a clear sense of Mäori purpose and readership which, however, is not exclusive, not only because (unlike those of last century) they have only sections in Mäori, but because they report on Mäori life which is now intrinsically bicultural.

     Mäori began the more substantial (in time, cost and expertise) publishing of books this century. The teaching texts have been referred to but by the end of the century there were diverse books in Mäori and English and, like the serials, these were serving Mäori needs. Books of the oral traditions are discussed above and demonstrate the significant role of scholars such as Apirana Ngata. He and others of his generation were accomplished writers in both languages and corresponded and contributed articles to contemporary journals on many matters. Pei Te Hurinui Jones also had a publishing record, of books in English about Tainui traditions, and of translations from The Merchant of Venice (1946) and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1975). Over the course of this century Mäori scholars such as Te Rangihïroa (Sir Peter Buck), Hirini Moko Mead, and I.H. Käwharu, have published books in English about Mäori culture. A new genre of tribal histories has arisen, some—J.H. Mitchell's Takitimu (1944) for instance—compiled by tribal members; these have put a tribal stamp on the literature, as have descriptive catalogues of treasured features of tribal territories such as F.L. Phillips's Landmarks of Tainui (1989). There have also been many ethnographies by Päkehä who have drawn information from literature in Mäori and of the oral traditions, notably the work of Elsdon Best.

     As the century has progressed more Mäori have published in Mäori. There has been writing in new genres, including non-fiction (to use a literary term): Barlow's bilingual descriptions of cultural concepts Tikanga Whakaaro (1991) and, all in Mäori, Hëmi Pötatau's autobiography (1991) and Ruka Broughton's biography of the Ngäti Ruanui leader and prophet, Tïtokowaru (1993), in which oral traditions, contemporary talk and written sources were brought together. Many Mäori writers and translators participate in the largest document of printed Mäori, Ngä Tängata Taumata Rau (1990-96), the Mäori editions of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . All these are new kinds of writing, intended for a public readership, which test the resources of the little-used language.

     Reprints are another way in which the literature has grown. A substantial trio in Mäori—and without translation, suggesting a new readership—reproduced writings by Ngäti Porou elders, Apirana Ngata, Mohi Türei, Rëweti Köhere and others, prepared by Wiremu and Te Ohorere Kaa (1994-96). These have traditional histories, letters, articles on political issues, local anecdotes, most published in turn-of-the-century journals and books. (The number of Ngäti Porou publishers is interesting, perhaps the influence of Ngata.) There have been other, informal, products in Mäori from Mäori Studies departments in universities: transcriptions of 19th-century letters and manuscripts, texts of newly composed songs.

     A statement of the scope of Mäori writing, particularly of that in English, is made in the five volumes of Te Ao Märama (1992-96) edited by Witi Ihimaera. This anthology of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children's literature contains some new writing but is mainly reprints which, taken together, illustrate how the size of this literature is disguised by its appearance in serials, newspapers, small books. The writing exemplifies how Mäori use both oral and literary genres. In English there are short stories, novels, poetry, plays. These styles are known and emulated by Mäori writers from their unavoidable experience of English literature at school. In Mäori there are songs, mythological accounts, stories of tribal tradition, a little creative writing. But there is also movement between genres; writing in English often pays homage to the oral traditions by quotations and allusions. The development from an oral tradition in Mäori to a literature in Mäori and English begs its own study which might be informed by comparison with this transition in other South Pacific cultures as summarised in Subranami's South Pacific Literature (1985) and Norman Simms's work.

     Literature helped Mäori cross the divide between the oral traditions and English. If capitulation to English was disappointing, it at least enabled the vital human habits of composing stories and poetry and led to the renowned work of writers such as Keri Hulme and Höne Tüwhare. As the fiction of Patricia Grace and Witi Ihimaera tells, the move from the tribal and Mäori language domain to the city and English created, by its strangeness, a new life to be written about. In the 19th century Mäori were secure in their culture and selectively incorporated the strange, new literature and experiences into it. Mäori who write in English often reflect on the differences between the old secure world and the new strange one, especially in terms of loss of language, voice and culture, which print cannot on its own return. In Patricia Grace's novel Potiki (1986) the characters regret learning strangers' stories at school while their own have to be rediscovered in themselves and told. Literature brought new stories; the old stories are now in part (oral storytelling is a strong tradition in Mäori families) retold in this new way, in English and through print. From this writing in English there have been two translations into Mäori, of Ihimaera's books Pounamu, Pounamu (1986) and The Whale Rider (1987). (This resembles the 19th-century translating of Pilgrim's Progress , insofar as it is publishing with an intention other than the author's, in this case to promote the language.) But there has been little original fiction in Mäori. Some short stories appeared in Te Ao Hou in the 1950s and 1960s, a small collection Ngä Pakiwaitara a Huia , was published in 1995. Fictional writing in Mäori has been mainly stories for children.

     Since the 1980s the amount of publishing of literature for children has been striking, some is included in the fourth volume of Te Ao Märama (1994). Print again has been enlisted to aid language acquisition. Some books are bilingual, many solely in Mäori; ancient and modern life are content for the stories. Many Mäori have been drawn to this task, and books have come off the press in great numbers. The Ministry of Education has sponsored them, mainstream publishers have produced handsome examples, and others have been published with pride and dedicated purpose by small groups in local communities.

     Major incentives for Mäori publishing in the 20th century might be posited as to turn the tide of language loss by provision for teaching, and to preserve traditional knowledge. But there are signs—the newspapers, children's literature, and writing in English—that publishing has broader objects, perhaps the typically literary use of making ideas, knowledge, and stories public. Most publishing has been funded by government, through educational institutions or funds designated for literature and the arts. Self-sufficiency in publishing has been rare, economically difficult, but as Mäori have gained economic and cultural autonomy, there has been a move to independent publishing. There are certain long-standing centres of production such as churches of different denominations and of the Mäori faiths of Ringatü and Ratana, which publish Mäori prayer and hymn books, new editions of the Mäori Bible, journals. Limited funds, the small potential readership, sometimes the speed with which things are produced, have led to the corpus of Mäori literature having numerous small, plain, functional items—typescripts, pamphlets, booklets, newspapers—put out in small print runs, often by desktop publishing. These have a limited circulation, easily disappear and do not make an impression on the market, yet much can be learnt from this casual, fragile literature. It is also witness to how print is used—to commemorate the opening of a meeting-house or a family reunion. Print is also engaged to proclaim the importance of the language, to urge speaking of it—Mäori words, songs, quotations, appear on calendars, posters, clothing, advertising.

     A comprehensive survey of 20th-century printing might also confirm a change in publishers' attitudes to Mäori literature. Previously wary of the small readership, there has been specific promotion from university presses and the publishing houses of Penguin, Reed in particular (who have long

supported it), and Huia Publishers who have it as a special brief. Whether from goodwill or sufficient market, this fact along with Mäori concern for their own style of product has brought many better-looking, prominent books. There is still, however, a hidden literature in libraries and archives—books that are out of print, articles in defunct journals, manuscripts. Much could be done with a programme of reprints.

     New initiatives in publishing brought attention back to concerns which translators of the Bible faced last century about the orthography and standards for print. The Mäori Language Commission has played a key role in specifying conventions for marking of long vowels, word breaks, spelling, hyphenation in names. This work, which predicts a future for publishing in the language, has been done to encourage use of Mäori in print, for teaching purposes, and in concert with editors of pioneering projects such as the Mäori volumes of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . The need for this is indicated too by the standard of public notices in Mäori; these often show a lack of familiarity with written conventions, a tendency to write the language as it is spoken. The Commission has communicated its recommendations for printed modern Mäori in booklets, pamphlets, and its Mäori newsletter. It has contributed significantly to the quality and quantity of printed Mäori by translation of all kinds of public documents, newspaper advertisements, job descriptions, notices. This proliferation of public documents in Mäori is perhaps a consequence of the 1987 Act which made Mäori an official language of New Zealand.

     If Mäori sometimes seem uninterested in, even averse to, literature, it may be because some books about them have been antithetical to their reality or produced without acknowledgement of their contributions or without their authority. Michael King registers opinion on this in 'Some Maori attitudes to documents' (1978). There is of course no way in which literature can be entirely trusted, but for Mäori it has raised the issue, in respect of traditional knowledge at least, of intellectual property rights. The literature of the later 20th century is much more theirs, produced essentially for themselves or in cooperation with Päkehä. Nevertheless a history of 20th-century Mäori publishing would need to canvass Mäori opinion as to their preferences for its use.

     Although this brief survey suggests a limited, highly selective, even predominantly scholars' use of print by Mäori for literature in Mäori and English, it is not sufficient an investigation to attribute reasons for this. Further research might assess how the enduring oral traditions, colonisation, and cultural custom have determined Mäori use of the utilities of literacy. If there had not been the experience of colonisation, it may have been that Mäori would not have chosen to use print as a primary technology, as some oral societies new to print have done. But language loss is evidently one reason for the paucity of literature in Mäori. Print demands sophistication with written language, if not from the writer then at least from editors and publishers. That sophistication is acquired when language is used as a first language and there is schooling in it. One overriding aspect of almost two centuries of Mäori use of writing, print and publishing has been the continuing decline in the number of people who speak Mäori as a first language. Moreover, Mäori has only relatively recently been taught in schools and universities, the very places which prepare people to publish. In view of this the fact that there is so much printing in Mäori is remarkable. Print cannot do what speech can, keep the language alive, and that is an imperative for many Mäori. Print meantime plays a role towards that and, in addition, maintains the language as a revered object of study for future scholars of Mäori and of the history of humanity.

New Zealand English

Like other national and regional forms of English, the New Zealand variety is most distinctive in its oral rather than in its written and printed realisations. New Zealanders, just as Australians, South Africans and so on, are recognised above all by their speech, by features of accent inevitably present in every spoken New Zealand utterance.

     The written form of English around the world is more uniform (apart from spelling variants) than the spoken form and has changed little since standard written English was established by 15th-and 16th-century printers and subsequently enshrined in the earliest English grammars and dictionaries.

     A New Zealand scientific paper, company report or love poem, for example, may well contain no linguistic markers at all of its New Zealand origin or authorship. This is because the grammar of English (especially formal English) in New Zealand, including spelling, is virtually indistinguishable from that of British English. Such differences as do exist are matters of relative frequency of certain forms and constructions—greater preference in New Zealand for singular verbs with collective nouns like 'committee', for example—and are revealed only by detailed sociolinguistic analysis.

     Thus no separate grammar of New Zealand English has yet been written, since grammars of British English have hitherto been considered adequate to describe (and prescribe) New Zealand usage also. This state of affairs was for the greater part of this century encouraged by educators and authorities (such as Professor Arnold Wall) who were highly critical of any deviation in New Zealand from British English linguistic models.

     Where New Zealand English in print does differ from its equivalent elsewhere the major indicators of that difference are lexical, not grammatical. Lexis or vocabulary is the other level besides accent at which New Zealand English is distinctive, in both words and meanings. There are many words found only in New Zealand English ('marae', 'morepork'), while other words ('mainland', 'mufti') have acquired individual meanings here which are either additional to or substitutions for those used in general English. New Zealand words and meanings may or may not have specific reference to New Zealand itself ('mänuka' versus 'mocker' = 'clothes', 'gear'). Also, many are shared with Australian English ('mob' (of sheep etc.), 'mullock'), largely as a consequence of the common colonial experience of the two countries.

     Unlike accent features which pervade all spoken discourse, lexical features are occasional, sporadic, and very much a product of subject and purpose. If the writing in question deals with specifically New Zealand themes and topics, the use of New Zealandisms is natural enough. We will expect vocabulary drawn from te reo Mäori in writing on Mäori subjects, New Zealand agricultural terms in farming publications, words relating to our distinctive social institutions and practices in political journalism, and so on. Proper names also play a significant part in identifying writing that originates in this country.

     Literary artists wishing to represent the unselfconscious, colloquial speech of New Zealanders in print must also rely largely on lexical features. Critics sometimes claim to detect New Zealand 'accents' in novels and other fiction, but with occasional exceptions (usually comic and satiric) what is reproduced on the page—indeed all that can satisfactorily be reproduced—is New Zealand vocabulary and idiom. Slang often acquires a printed form in this way. The accent may be projected onto the text by the reader, but it is rarely indicated overtly.

     Most New Zealand words and usages, like most new elements in all vocabularies everywhere, are initially coined or borrowed in the spoken language and only subsequently set down in writing. The earliest examples of this process here are traceable to the first English speakers to visit Aotearoa and their encounters with an unfamiliar natural environment and indigenous culture. Words borrowed from Mäori, various compounds for flora and fauna, etc., first acquire a printed form in the works associated with Cook's voyages. More appear in the early 19th-century accounts of Savage, Nicholas and all subsequent travellers and colonists whose observations about this faraway land were written down and set before a fascinated British readership.

     This New Zealand vocabulary was not at first part of New Zealand English, since that did not yet exist. It circulated at first (ephemerally) in Britain, but its longer-term survival was to be as part of a written New Zealand English that eventually developed (alongside a spoken New Zealand English) in the decades following 1840. The rapid development of a range of printed materials for a steadily growing colonial readership and use gave New Zealandisms, old and new, a permanent home. Some terms had (and have) a limited lifespan, but no word once printed is ever lost from the language entirely, and shortlived expressions are often significant markers of a particular historical era ('swaggie', 'six o'clock swill', 'Rogernomics').

     By the end of the 19th century, the English vocabulary in Australia and New Zealand had assumed a sufficiently different character from that in Britain or North America to prompt the first lexicographical accounts of its distinctive usages. The Australian Edward Morris's Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898), using dated citations in the style of the Oxford English Dictionary , was the first work to record at least some of the Mäori words and other New Zealand forms found in 18th-and 19th-century publications. Also in 1898, a supplement of 700 Australian and New Zealand words prepared by Joshua Lake was published in an Australasian edition of the massive Webster's International Dictionary . After this initial flourish, Australasian lexicography virtually ground to a halt for nearly two-thirds of the 20th century. Dictionaries compiled in England, especially those of the Oxford 'family' including the Concise and Pocket Oxfords (first editions 1911 and 1924 respectively) became standard reference works in New Zealand also, though they contained almost no Australasian usage. The educational climate in particular did not encourage recognition of linguistic difference in New Zealand, though at least one school dictionary in the 1930s had a short supplement of Australian and New Zealand vocabulary.

     One or two substantial specialist accounts of the local vocabulary also appeared, for example 'A sheep station glossary' by L.G.D. Acland (1933, reprinted in The Early Canterbury Runs , 1951), and Andersen's 'Maori words incorporated into the English language' ( Journal of the Polynesian Society , 1946). Eric Partridge also gave some space to New Zealand expressions in his Slang Today and Yesterday (3rd ed. 1950).

     Colloquialism and slang were felt to be the main (and therefore somewhat disreputable) way in which New Zealand usage was distinctive from English elsewhere, a view evidently reflected in the title of Sidney Baker's New Zealand Slang: A Dictionary of Colloquialisms (1941). This valuable study of New Zealand words is neither a dictionary in the alphabetical manner, nor confined to slang and colloquialism.

     Australasian supplements to British dictionaries reappeared in the 1960s, one appended to the local edition of the Collins Contemporary Dictionary (1965), and another (ed. Robert Burchfield) to the 5th edition of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1969). Attitudes were changing, and the weakening of ties with Britain was to have linguistic as well as other repercussions. New Zealand English became more 'respectable' and general English dictionaries catering for New Zealanders' needs became possible. The Heinemann New Zealand Dictionary , ed. Harry Orsman (1979, 2nd ed. 1989), was a landmark publication, the first work to integrate New Zealandisms with the main body of English words to create a general purpose New Zealand dictionary.

     This was followed by a New Zealand edition of the New Collins Concise English Dictionary , and the Collins New Zealand Compact English Dictionary (both editions by Ian Gordon, 1982 and 1985), and by Burchfield's New Zealand Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1986, 2nd ed. Deverson, 1997). In recent years New Zealand dictionaries have come thick and fast, including New Zealand adaptations of some Oxford school dictionaries, and popular collections of slang, notably those of David McGill (1988 and 1989).

     A further lexicographical landmark was the first substantial publication consisting solely of New Zealand usage, Elizabeth and Harry Orsman's New Zealand Dictionary (1994, 2nd ed. 1995). This contains a concise selection of the rich materials assiduously compiled by Harry Orsman over more than 40 years. It has since been followed by Orsman's major work, the historical Dictionary of New Zealand English (1997), a work of almost 8,000 headwords supported by some 47,000 quotations drawn from a reading of over 4,000 printed sources. The dictionary itself, and the much larger body of material it derives from (less than a third of Orsman's total collection of citations is used), will provide an immensely valuable research base for future lexicographers and historians of New Zealand English. Without Orsman's efforts New Zealand lexicography would be a flimsy thing indeed (see his '"The Dictionary of New Zealand English": a beginning and (almost) an end', 1995).

     Aside from lexicography, most of the published work on New Zealand English to date has centred on pronunciation rather than printed uses, but notable general accounts include J.A.W. Bennett's article, 'English as it is spoken in New Zealand' (1943), George Turner's The English Language in Australia and New Zealand (1966), and Laurie Bauer's chapter on 'English in New Zealand' in vol.5 of The Cambridge History of the English Language (1995).

     Since the early 1980s there has been a rapid growth in teaching and research activity in the field of New Zealand English in the country's universities, particularly those of the four main centres. New Zealand English has become the subject of intense scrutiny in the context of a world wide surge of interest in all varieties of English. A periodical devoted exclusively to New Zealand English studies, the New Zealand English Journal (formerly Newsletter ), published annually by the Department of English at the University of Canterbury since 1987, includes regular bibliographies of published work in the subject.

     New Zealand is unusual among English-speaking countries in making its own form of the language a topic for study in schools; textbooks written by Elizabeth Gordon and Tony Deverson ( New Zealand English , 1985, Finding a New Zealand Voice , 1989, New Zealand English and English in New Zealand , 1997) have provided resources for the teaching of New Zealand English in the senior secondary school curriculum.

     Corpus studies are a further element in the New Zealand English research picture. Victoria University is home to the one-million-word Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand English, completed in 1993 under the direction of Laurie Bauer, as well as a spoken corpus of the same size. The written corpus, based for the most part on the year 1986, offers a substantial and consolidated insight into contemporary New Zealand English in print. It is of inestimable value to those investigating the lexical and grammatical features of our variety of English as it nears the end of the 20th century.