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Te Reo Maori

Meet Drops, the new international app that bridges te reo Māori with the world

Te reo tech

Meet Drops, the new international app that bridges te reo Māori with the world

By Findlay Buchanan

Te reo Māori has set sail for an international audience this week with the launch of Māori for iOS and Android on multi-language learning app Drops. The Māori app release will include almost 2000 words to enable vocabulary comprehension that, according to linguists, provides a sufficient understanding of 80 to 90 percent of New Zealand's native language. Drops was crowned Google Play’s ‘Best App of 2018’ and is the first major multi-language app to add te reo Māori, and could be a useful tool for those closer to home (*cough Don Brash cough*). We talk to the Hungarian co-founder and chief executive officer, Daniel Farkas, about its choice to step into te reo Māori.

New Zealand Identity

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Technology has been used in a myriad of ways to increase the use of Te Reo Māori, but Designworks is taking it back to basics with a simple-but-beautiful way of encouraging use of our native language. It has created a not-for-profit, Pepeha, which takes a Māori traditional way of introduction that has been used for centuries and adds a design twist, producing personalised prints of each person’s pepeha – or a summary of who they are, who their family is and what part of New Zealand they come from.

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