Page 7 - New Zealand Destination Guide - Alluring Asia

THE PEOPLE Citizens of New Zealand are ethnically identified as 67.6 percent European, 14.6 as Maori, 9.2 percent Asian, 6.9 percent Pacific peoples, PAGE 3 and 11.1 percent identified themselves simply as a "New Zealander". Population | Time | Visas History There is approximately 1 new immigrant for every 100 New Zealand residents and overall, 23 percent of the population were born overseas. PAGE 4 Language The Māori people are the indigenous people of Aotearoa (New Zealand) PAGE 5 and first arrived here in waka hourua (voyaging canoes) from their Climate ancestral homeland of Hawaiki over 1000 years ago. Today, Māori make up over 14 percent of the population. Their language and culture has a PAGE 6 The Land major impact on all facets of New Zealand life. PAGE 7 Māori culture is a rich and varied one, and includes traditional and The People contemporary arts. Traditional arts such as carving, weaving, kapa haka PAGE 8 (group performance), whaikorero (oratory) and moko (tattoo) are Currency | Credit Cards practised throughout the country. Practitioners following in the footsteps Changing Money | Tipping of their tipuna (ancestors) replicate the techniques used hundreds of The visitor to New Zealand will Safety & Crime become immediately aware of years ago, yet also develop exciting new techniques and forms. Today PAGE 9 Māori culture also includes art, film, television, poetry, theatre, and hip- the Māori language as the vast Communications | What to Pack hop. majority of place names are of Health & Vaccinations Māori origin. At first, visitors may be puzzled by the PAGE 10 Shopping | Customs | Etiquette seemingly impossible- to- pronounce names. In fact, Māori PAGE 11 has a logical structure, and, Food & Drinks unlike English, has very consistent rules of PAGE 12 Culture & The Arts | Religion pronunciation. How Do You Say Onehunga, Whangamomona, Kahikatea, and Nguru? Māori consists of five vowel sounds: a e i o u (‘a’ as in ‘car’, ‘e’ as in ‘egg’, ‘i’ like the ‘ee’ in ‘tee’, ‘u’ like an ‘o’ in ‘to’). There are eight consonants in Māori similar to those in English — ‘h’, ‘k’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘t’, and ‘w’. There are also two different consonants — ‘wh’ and ‘ng’. Many Māori pronounce the ‘wh’ sound similar to our ‘f’. The ‘ng’ is similar to our own ‘ng’ sound in a word like ‘sing’, except that in Māori, words can start with ‘ng’. 7