World Language Map

Where is Maori spoken?

Maori (te reo Māori) is an Austronesian language, spoken in New Zealand. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Maori is spoken

Maori is spoken in one country: New Zealand. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
New Zealand2.8%144,514

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Maori is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Maori.

How many people speak Maori?

Wikidata gives about 214,000 speakers (stats.govt.nz, 2023). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Shifting. Glottolog lists it as shifting: the youngest speakers are adults, and children are growing up speaking another language.

Where Maori sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Maori as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Central Pacific linkage
  6. Tokalau Fijian
  7. Polynesian
  8. Nuclear Polynesian
  9. Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian
  10. Solomons Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian
  11. Central Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian
  12. East Polynesian
  13. East Polynesian Proximal
  14. Southern East Polynesian Proximal
  15. Maoric
  16. Maori

More about Maori

Codes: ISO 639-3 mri, Glottolog maor1246. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Maori

Where is Maori spoken?

Maori is spoken in New Zealand. Unicode CLDR puts it at 2.8% of the population of New Zealand, which is about 144,514 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Maori?

Wikidata gives about 214,000 speakers (stats.govt.nz, 2023). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Maori in?

Glottolog places Maori in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central Pacific linkage, Tokalau Fijian, Polynesian, Nuclear Polynesian, Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian, Solomons Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian, Central Northern Outlier Polynesian-East Polynesian, East Polynesian, East Polynesian Proximal, Southern East Polynesian Proximal and Maoric.

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