New Zealand Languages – The Complete Overview

新西兰语言-完整概述

2021-11-05 21:50 Morningside

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It’s time to put New Zealand’s language under the microscope. I want to take a look at everything from what languages are spoken in New Zealand to where their speakers reside. Let’s dive straight in. What Language Is Spoken in New Zealand? The most widely spoken language in New Zealand is English, but it is far from the only language spoken there. Te reo Māori, Samoan, Mandarin and Hindi all have sizeable speaker numbers. In fact, there are seven languages spoken in New Zealand (in addition to English) that have speaker populations of 50,000 or more. I’ll take a look at each of these below. Is There an Official New Zealand Language? Let’s start with the three New Zealand official languages. These are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. For many years, English was the only official language. However, Te reo Māori (also simply called ‘Māori’) was finally recognised as a New Zealand official language in 1987. New Zealand sign language followed suit in 2006. A Brief History of New Zealand Language Until the early 19th century, Māori was the dominant language in New Zealand, having arrived there from the Southern Cook or Society Islands region of Eastern Polynesia many hundreds of years previously. Māori developed in isolation until around 1800, when English-speaking arrived colonists arrived. By the middle of that century, increasing numbers of Māori people had learned English, with schooling increasingly filtering out the use of their native language. By 1900, much greater emphasis was placed on learning English, with the pace of Māori’s decline accelerating rapidly between 1940 and 1980 thanks to discriminatory attitudes and policies. In New Zealand language remains a contentious issue to this day as a result of the active suppression of Māori. From the early 1980s onward, a number of Māori language recovery programs have been implemented to promote the use of the language. They have managed to slow the pace of decline but not reverse it, with the result that only around 4% of New Zealanders now speak te reo Māori. The Complete List of New Zealand Languages After that quick history lesson, let’s take a look at some of the most widely spoken New Zealand languages. English What language do they speak in New Zealand more than any other? That would be English, which is spoken by 95.4% of the country’s population. In terms of the three New Zealand official languages English is far from the oldest but it is spoken either natively or as a second language by almost the entire country’s population. New Zealand English has its own distinctive accent and incorporates vocabulary that is not found in British, American or Australian English. Words such as tangata whenua and iwi, for example, are routinely used in English-language media without accompanying translation (they mean people of the land and tribe, respectively). TripAdvisor sums up NZ English by saying: “English is spoken throughout New Zealand, although there are many local acronyms and phrases that may confuse foreign visitors.” Not all of these are words drawn from te reo Māori. If you’re looking for a small convenience store in New Zealand, for example, you’ll need to ask for where the ‘dairy’ is (and not a cow in sight). A ‘Coaster’ isn’t something you put your drink on, but a resident of the South Island’s West Coast. ‘Gum boots’ are wellingtons, ‘jandals’ are flipflops and ‘hoon’ could refer to either a hooligan or the way someone is driving. Suffice it to say, if you’re an English speaker who is visiting New Zealand, be ready to pick up a few new words and phrases along the way. Te Reo Māori How many people speak Māori? Despite being the predominant NZ language for centuries, te reo Māori is spoken by just 4% of the country’s population today. That still makes this native New Zealand language the second most spoken tongue in the country, but speaker numbers continue to decline. The 2018 census recorded 185,955 Māori speakers. Māori is written using the Latin alphabet, as introduced by missionaries in the early 19th century, who found that the language didn’t have an indigenous writing system. There are several dialects/variations of Māori, all of which are mutually intelligible to fluent Māori speakers. For a discussion of the differences between languages and dialects, click the link below. While vocabulary, idioms and pronunciation vary across Māori’s variations, the language’s grammatical structure remains consistent. In support of the revival of Māori, initiatives over the past few decades have aimed to increase the use of the language both at home and in public and business settings. Te Wiki o te reo Māori (Māori language week) has been celebrated since 1975, to raise general awareness of the historic and cultural importance of the language. Other notable Māori revival projects have included the Kōhanga Reo (language nests) movement, which launched in 1982 and aimed to immerse infants in Māori between birth and school age. Children, families and respected elders gather together to talk, play, learn and pray, all in te reo Māori, thus building important community links as well as growing language skills. Another important project was the Kura Kaupapa Māori project, which promoted primary and secondary Māori-language immersion schools. With Māori as their primary language of instruction, the growth of these schools can be attributed to the success of the Kōhanga Reo initiative (it has also inspired similar projects in New Zealand for other minority languages, including the Hawaiian language, Fijian and Tongan). While such projects have slowed the decline of te reo Māori, greater effort is needed if speaker numbers are ever to begin rising again. Read more: What Is the Difference Between a Language and a Dialect? Samoan Another language spoken in New Zealand is Samoan, which is spoken by 101,937 New Zealanders, according to the 2018 census. That’s just over 2% of the country’s total population, making Samoan the third most spoken of the NZ languages. Around 64% of ethnic Samoan New Zealanders speak Samoan. A number of initiatives are in place to encourage the use of Samoan in New Zealand, from varying levels of language classes to Samoan Language Week. Samoan bears some resemblance to a number of other languages, including Ilocano, which is the third most spoken native language of the Philippines. You can read more about the languages of the Philippines by clicking the link below. Read more: The Philippines’ Language Report: What Language Is Spoken in the Philippines? Mandarin There are 95,253 Mandarin speakers in New Zealand, making this the fourth most spoken language in the country. The majority of Mandarin speakers, in common with most Chinese language speakers in New Zealand, live in Auckland. The reporting of Mandarin speakers in New Zealand has caused some tensions in recent years. Raymond Huo, speaking for the NZ Chinese Language Week Trust, argued that, “Treating Mandarin, Yue or other Chinese dialects as independent languages is deeply flawed”. Despite this, Statistics New Zealand continues to count Mandarin, Yue and other Chinese speakers separately, with census general manager Denise McGregor pointing out that: : “It's incredibly useful to know that in a school zone, or at a specific library, or on a particular bus route there will be people who speak specifically Mandarin or Chinese. Just knowing they speak 'Chinese' isn't likely to be as useful in targeting services.” Hindi The 2018 census reports that there are 69,471 Hindi speakers in New Zealand. Their numbers are growing rapidly, having more than tripled since 2001, when New Zealand was home to just 22,759 Hindi speakers. French French speakers in New Zealand numbered 55,116 at the time of the 2018 census – a marginal increase compared to the 49,000 French speakers recorded there in 2001. French in New Zealand is celebrated by multiple language and culture groups, whose members meet up in person and online to actively promote the use of the French language and celebrate their culture. Yue Just over 1% of the population of New Zealand speaks Yue. That equates to 52,767 individuals. As with other Chinese languages and dialects in New Zealand, Yue speaker numbers have jumped in recent years – back in 2001, just 37,143 Yue speakers recorded. Chinese A catch-all ‘Sintic’ classification in the New Zealand census records speakers of Chinese languages and dialects other than Mandarin and Yue. In 2001, there were 22,854 Sintic language speakers in New Zealand. Now, that figure has more than doubled, to 51,501. New Zealand Sign Language Referred to as te reo Turi in Māori, New Zealand Sign Language is one of the three official languages of New Zealand. It is spoken by around 0.5% of the population, with 22,986 speakers at the time of the 2018 census. New Zealand Sign Language has many similarities to British Sign Language, Australian Sign Language and American Sign Language. The similarity level with British Sign Language stands at 62.5%, compared to 33% with American Sign Language. As with the English spoken in New Zealand, New Zealand Sign Language incorporates Māori words, such as marae (a fenced-in area of land and carved buildings that serves as a community focal point) and tangi (a formal funeral rite held on a marae). New Zealand Languages with Fewer than 50,000 Speakers A range of other languages spoken in New Zealand were recorded in the country’s last census. Those with between 25,000 and 50,000 speakers include: • Tagalog • German • Spanish • Afrikaans • Tongan • Punjabi • Korean • Fiji Hindi New Zealand languages with 10,000 to 25,000 speakers, meanwhile, include: • Japanese • Dutch • Gujarati • Russian • Arabic • Portuguese • Tamil And when it comes to languages with 10,000 speakers or fewer, New Zealand is home to: • Italian • Thai • Malayalam • Malaysian • Cook Islands Māori • Urdu • Vietnamese • Khmer • Sinhala • Fijian • Persian • Indonesian • Min • Telugu • Serbo-Croatian • Marathi New Zealand Languages by Region Key to understanding any country’s linguistic makeup is looking at where within the country each of the languages is spoken. (Incidentally, this is something I found particularly interesting when looking at the languages of Malaysia. You can read more on that topic by clicking the link below.) With English being the primary language in New Zealand by such a clear margin, it is unsurprisingly the most spoken language in all 67 of the country’s cities and districts. In 60 of those areas, the second most commonly spoken New Zealand language is Māori. Let’s look quickly then at those final seven cities and districts. When it comes to Auckland language, Samoan speakers outnumber Māori speakers, with Samoan being the second most spoken language in Auckland and in Porirua city. In Wellington city, it is French that is the second most spoken language. In Ashburton district it is Tagalog, in the Tasman district it’s German and in the Mackenzie and Queenstown-Lakes districts, Spanish is the second most spoken language after English. Read more: Malaysian Language Overview: Exploring the 137 Languages of Malaysia Wrap Up Language can be an emotive issue in many ways and this is certainly the case with language in New Zealand. While the primary language of New Zealand hasn’t been Māori for several centuries, we are just coming to understand what a huge loss that represents. This is why more must be done to promote the speaking of Māori as a key New Zealand language. It’s inclusion as one of the country’s official languages is a start, but only a start. Why is language preservation so important? Well, many reasons, but chief among them are the intrinsic links between language and culture. As the Māori language is lost, so too is Māori history, culture, values and practices. We see this echoed around the world, with indigenous tongues being added to the list of extinct languages with alarming regularity. We don’t have time to preserve them all, but increased focus on language preservation will help at least some of these languages to grow and flourish once more. Let’s hope that Māori is one of them.
是时候把新西兰的语言放到显微镜下了。我想看看从新西兰讲什么语言到讲这些语言的人居住的地方。 让我们直入主题。 新西兰人说什么语言? 在新西兰使用最广泛的语言是英语,但它远不是唯一的语言。毛利语、萨摩亚语、普通话和印地语都有相当多的使用者。事实上,新西兰有7种语言(除了英语)使用人口超过5万。下面我将逐一介绍。 新西兰有官方语言吗? 让我们从新西兰的三种官方语言开始。这些是英语,毛利语和新西兰手语。多年来,英语是唯一的官方语言。然而,毛利语最终在1987年被承认为新西兰的官方语言。2006年,新西兰手语也紧随其后。 新西兰语简史 直到19世纪早期,毛利语一直是新西兰的主要语言,几百年前从南库克或东波利尼西亚社会群岛地区传入新西兰。 毛利语是在孤立中发展起来的,直到1800年左右,说英语的殖民者来到这里。到那个世纪中叶,越来越多的Māori人学习了英语,学校教育越来越排斥使用他们的母语。 到了1900年,人们更加重视英语的学习,1940年至1980年间,由于歧视性的态度和政策,毛利人占比的下降速度迅速加快。直到今天,在新西兰语言中仍然是一个有争议的问题,因为对毛利人的积极压制。 从20世纪80年代初开始,为了促进语言的使用,实施了一系列的毛利语言恢复计划。他们设法减缓了下降的速度,但没有扭转这一趋势,结果现在只有大约4%的新西兰人说t毛利语。 新西兰语言的完整列表 在上完快速的历史课之后,让我们看看一些最广泛使用的新西兰语言。 英语 在新西兰,人们说什么语言最多?那就是英语,这个国家有95.4%的人口说英语。 就新西兰的三种官方语言而言,英语远不是最古老的,但几乎整个国家的人口都以母语或作为第二语言使用英语。 新西兰英语有自己独特的口音,包含了英国英语、美国英语和澳大利亚英语所没有的词汇。例如,tangata whenua和iwi这样的词在英语媒体中经常使用,不需要翻译(它们分别表示这片土地和部落的人)。 TripAdvisor对新西兰英语的总结是: “新西兰到处都说英语,尽管有很多当地的缩写和短语可能会让外国游客感到困惑。” 并非所有这些词都来自毛利语。例如,如果你想在新西兰找一家小便利店,你需要询问“dairy”(牛奶场)在哪里(而且视线范围内不能有奶牛)。“杯垫”并不是指你把饮料放在上面,而是指南岛西海岸的居民。“Gum boots”指的是惠灵顿靴,“jandals”指的是人字拖,“hoon”指的是流氓或者某人开车的方式。 我只想说,如果你是一个说英语的人,正在新西兰旅游,那就准备好学习一些新单词和短语。 毛利人 有多少人会说毛利语?尽管数百年来一直是新西兰的主要语言,但说毛利语的人如今仅占全国人口的4%。这使得母语新西兰语仍然是该国第二大口语,但使用人数继续下降。2018年人口普查记录了185955名毛利语的使用者。 毛利语是由传教士在19世纪早期引入的拉丁字母书写的,他们发现这种语言没有本土的书写系统。 毛利语有几种方言/变体,讲毛利语的人都能流利地理解它们。要讨论语言和方言之间的差异,请点击下面的链接。虽然毛利语的词汇、习语和发音各不相同,但语言的语法结构是一致的。 为了支持毛利语i的复兴,在过去几十年里,一些倡议旨在增加该语言在家庭、公共场合和商业场合的使用。自1975年以来,一直在庆祝毛利语语言周,旨在提高人们对语言的历史和文化重要性的认识。 其他著名的毛利人i复兴项目还包括Kōhanga Reo(语言巢)运动,该运动于1982年发起,旨在让从出生到上学的婴儿沉浸在毛利语中。孩子、家人和受人尊敬的长者聚集在一起聊天、玩耍、学习和祈祷,所有这些都在毛利语i中,从而建立重要的社区联系,并提高语言技能。 另一个重要的项目是Kura Kaupapa 毛利语项目,该项目推广中小学毛利语浸入式学校。以毛利语为主要教学语言,这些学校的增长可归因于Kōhanga Reo倡议的成功(它也激发了新西兰其他少数民族语言的类似项目,包括夏威夷语、斐济语和汤加语)。 虽然这些项目减缓了毛利语的衰落,但如果毛利人数量要再次开始上升,还需要付出更大的努力。 阅读更多:语言和方言的区别是什么? 萨摩亚语 新西兰的另一种语言是萨摩亚语,根据2018年的人口普查,有101,937名新西兰人说萨摩亚语。这只占新西兰总人口的2%多一点,使萨摩亚语成为新西兰第三大语言。 大约64%的萨摩亚新西兰人说萨摩亚语。新西兰已经采取了一些措施,鼓励在新西兰使用萨摩亚语,从不同程度的语文课到萨摩亚语言周。 萨摩亚语与其他一些语言有一些相似之处,包括菲律宾第三大母语伊洛卡诺语。你可以点击下面的链接阅读更多关于菲律宾的语言。 阅读更多:菲律宾语言报道:菲律宾人讲什么语言? 普通话 在新西兰有95,253人说普通话,这使普通话成为该国第四大语言。大多数说普通话的人住在奥克兰,这与新西兰大多数说中文的人一样。 近年来,有关新西兰说普通话的报道引起了一些紧张的局势。新西兰中文周基金会的Raymond Huo表示,“把普通话、粤语或其他中国方言当作独立语言是有严重缺陷的。” 尽管如此,新西兰统计局仍将普通话、粤语和其他汉语使用者分开统计,人口普查局总经理丹尼斯·麦格雷戈指出: “知道在某个学校区域、某个图书馆或某个公交线路上会有人说特定的普通话或中文,这是非常有用的。仅仅知道他们说‘中文’,在瞄准服务方面可能没有那么有用。” 印地语 2018年的人口普查报告显示,新西兰有69471人说印地语。他们的人数正在迅速增长,是2001年的三倍多,当时新西兰只有22759名印地语使用者。 法语 2018年人口普查时,新西兰说法语的人数为55116人,与2001年的49000人相比略有增加。 法语在新西兰是由多种语言和文化团体庆祝的,这些团体的成员通过面对面和在线的方式积极推广法语的使用,并庆祝他们的文化。 粤语 只有超过1%的新西兰人说粤语。这相当于52,767个人。与新西兰的其他汉语语言和方言一样,说粤语的人数近年来也有所上升——2001年,说粤语的人数仅为37143人 汉语 在新西兰人口普查中,一个笼统的“汉语”分类记录了除普通话和粤语外的其他汉语和方言的使用者。2001年,新西兰有22,854人说汉语。现在,这个数字已经翻了一倍多,达到51501人。 新西兰手语 新西兰手语在毛利语中称为te reo Turi,新西兰手语是新西兰三大官方语言之一。约0.5%的人口说英语,2018年人口普查时有22986人说英语。 新西兰手语与英国手语、澳大利亚手语和美国手语有很多相似之处。与英国手语相似度为62.5%,与美国手语相似度为33%。 和新西兰所说的英语一样,新西兰手语也包含毛利语这样的单词,比如marae(用栅栏围起来的土地和雕刻的建筑,作为社区的焦点)和tangi(在marae上举行的正式葬礼仪式)。 使用少于5万人的新西兰语言 新西兰最近的人口普查记录了新西兰使用的一系列其他语言。有2.5万到5万名使用者包括: 塔加拉族 •德语 •西班牙语 •南非荷兰语 •汤加语 •旁遮普语 •韩语 •斐济印地语 有1万到2.5万人使用的新西兰语言包括: •日语 •荷兰语 •古吉拉特语 •俄语 •阿拉伯语 •葡萄牙语 •泰米尔语 说到拥有1万或更少使用者的语言,新西兰是以下国家的故乡: •意大利语 •泰语 •蒙古语 •马来西亚语 •库克群岛毛利语 •乌尔都语 •越南语 •高棉语 •僧伽罗语 •斐济语 •波斯语 •印尼语 •小语 •泰卢固语 •塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语 •马拉地语 新西兰各地区的语言不一样 要了解任何国家的语言构成,关键是要了解每种语言在该国的哪个地区使用。(顺便说一句,当我研究马来西亚的语言时,我发现这一点特别有趣。你可以点击下面的链接阅读更多相关内容。) 英语以如此明显的优势成为新西兰的主要语言,并不奇怪,在全国67个城市和地区中,英语是使用最多的语言。在其中60个地区,新西兰第二常用语言是毛利语。 让我们快速看一下最后七个城市和地区。说到奥克兰语,说萨摩亚语的人数超过了毛利语,萨摩亚语是奥克兰和波里鲁阿市第二大语言。 在惠灵顿市,法语是第二大语言。在阿什伯顿(Ashburton)地区是塔加卢语(Tagalog),在塔斯曼(Tasman)地区是德语,在麦肯齐(Mackenzie)和皇后镇湖区(Queenstown-Lakes)地区,西班牙语是仅次于英语的第二大语言。 阅读更多:马来西亚语言概述:探索马来西亚的137种语言 圆满完成 语言在很多方面都是一个情绪化的问题,新西兰的语言就是这样。虽然几个世纪以来,新西兰的主要语言都不是Māori,但我们才开始明白这是多么巨大的损失。这就是为什么必须做更多的工作来推广Māori作为新西兰的主要语言。它被纳入国家的官方语言是一个开始,但仅仅是一个开始。 为什么保存语言如此重要?原因有很多,但最主要的是语言和文化之间的内在联系。随着毛利语言的消失,毛利人的历史、文化、价值观和实践也消失了。我们看到这种现象在世界各地得到了呼应,土著语言正以惊人的规律被列入灭绝语言的名单。我们没有时间去保护它们所有的语言,但是增加对语言保护的关注将至少帮助其中一些语言再次发展和繁荣。希望毛利语是其中之一。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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