The goal of Te Ngata is to support the study of kupu Māori, with an emphasis on the inclusion and surfacing of words that are useful to those on their learning journey of te reo Māori.
This project was born out of a couple of key challenges:
- my own 100-page Google Doc of study notes was starting to get hard to navigate and find the kupu I’d learnt, and
- there wasn’t a tool available that weighted words by how much they’re actually used, and how valuable they are for a learner to try and learn.
The particular thing I want to avoid is creating a resource that presents learners with words that aren’t commonly used by native or fluent speakers.
There aren’t nearly as many resources available for te reo Māori as there are for other languages, and I’ve seen many learners attempt to use a certain online dictionary, and grab at a word that floats to the top without any context for if it’s a word that is useful or likely to be understood.
Words on Te Ngata have been ranked into five general categories:
- Words that have an extremely high frequency of use, and are going to be useful for all tauira
. These are usually in about the most common 400 words.
- Words that have a very high frequency, and are going to be useful for most to know. These are usually in about the most common 800 words.
- Words that have a high frequency, and are likely to be useful to a learner. These are usually in about the most common 1200 words.
- Words that are common, and are likely to be useful to most learners. These are usually in about the most common 2000 words.
- Words and phrases that have been heard by me out in the world, and could be useful for learners. These are usually in about the most common 5000 words, or have been heard directly from a kaiako
, native, or fluent speaker.
Frequency data
All words are referenced against an ever-improving list of frequency, acknowledging that in some cases there are words that are spelt the same that may combine frequency data.
Data has been combined from Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga Ministry of Education data on te reo Māori word frequency of the top 1000 most common words, as well as publicly available information of te reo use within parliament as captured in public Hansard records, and collected and processed by Te Hiku Media and released to the public domain.
