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Resources and Acknowledgements
Almost nothing on this site began here. Other people recorded the spellings, argued out the rules, coined the new words — and gave all of it away free. This page names them, links what they made, and says what it does for Reo Māori Kūki ʻĀirani.
Go and read the originals. This site is a door, not a replacement: every source below is fuller and older than anything written about it here.
What this site is built from
They make Māori words for things the language has never needed words for — iCloud, EFTPOS, a Zoom meeting. That is what keeps a language able to describe the whole of modern life instead of reaching for English. They sit under the Ministry of Cultural Development, Tauranga Vānanga.
Thirty free pages that settle how the language is written: the thirteen letters, the ʻāmata, the macron, capitals, the days and months, and the words that change from island to island — Māʻuke among them. The difference between guessing a spelling and knowing it. The page it sits on holds Niue, Tokelau, Sāmoa and Tonga too.
Ten Cook Islands varieties, searchable, free, with a phone app — built by researchers working with elders and communities in the islands. It carries the 1995 Buse dictionary, so the standard work on the language is no longer something you have to own. The orthography guidelines name it as the first place to check a spelling.
One of the three partners behind the dictionaries above, and the reason the reo is taught in the islandsʻ own classrooms. A language that is not taught to children has one generation left in it; this is the ministry that decides it will be.
Māʻuke, ʻĀtiu and Mitiʻaro, given dictionaries of their own rather than folded into Rarotongan and quietly lost. Where the islands say a thing differently, this is the record that they do.
The reo can be examined through to Level 3, which is much of why it is still taught in New Zealand at all. The vocabulary lists and the past papers are free — Level 1, Level 2, Level 3.
The fullest free grammar of the language anywhere: pronouns, the small words that set time and mood, question words, ā and ō belonging. Written by volunteers, in French, for a language whose closest relative is spoken in a French territory. Your browser will translate it.
The Cook Islands Māori Dictionary — Buse, Taringa, Biggs and Moekaʻa — is the most authoritative work on the language, and is readable free online. Sally Akevai Nicholasʻs A Grammar of Southern Cook Islands Māori is the modern one, drawn from sixty hours of recorded speech across six islands, and the full PDF is free.
Parliament, Te Marae Ora, Justice, Finance, Internal Affairs, the Bank of the Cook Islands — six organisations, built by different people at different times, each running its site in Māori as well as English. Between them the reo does ordinary administrative work, which is what a language has to keep doing to stay alive.
The everyday words, the phrases and above all the replies — the thing that makes Vāareka answer rather than translate — were given by a fluent speaker, row by row. The Tahitian on the four languages page was written and checked by a native speaker of reo Tahiti. Neither is a citation you can look up. Both are the largest debt on this page.
People teaching the reo right now
Not sources for anything here — something better. These are the people putting the reo in front of thousands of us every week, on the phone we are already holding.
Charlie and Tom Harrison — best mates, one of them raised in Aitutaki and a native speaker — started teaching online during the lockdowns because there was almost nothing to learn from. They are now the most visible Cook Islands Māori teachers on social media by a distance: short videos, flashcards, posters, workshops, storytelling, and the Learn Cook Islands Māori podcast. They make the reo funny, current and easy to start, and they aim it at families raising children away from home. A dictionary waits to be opened; they arrive in the feed on their own.
A week of free phrases, posters and events aimed at families raising children away from the islands. The material stays up between years.
The museum, the national library, the archives, the cultural events — and Te Kōpapa Reo Māori itself. New terms are announced on their page first.
The National Māori Language Institute, and the people who put the Cook Islands dictionaries online. Their YouTube carries recorded speech — the one thing a written page cannot give you.
What is mine, and what is not
The wording here is mine, and so are the mistakes. The language is not. Nothing has been invented or generated: Vāareka answers only from rows a speaker filled in, and says so when she has not been taught something — because a confident wrong answer is worse than “I donʻt know”.
Every source above is free. If you can support or correct any of them, that is worth more than anything this site does.
Links checked August 2026. If one has moved, or something is credited wrongly or not at all, please tell me — the acknowledgements matter more than the page.