Editing Māori language (section)

=== Vowels ===

{| class="wikitable"
!
! align="center"|[[Front vowel|Front]]
! align="center"|[[Central vowel|Central]]
! align="center"|[[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
! align="left"|[[Close vowel|Close]]
| align="center"|{{IPAlink|i}}, {{IPAlink|iː}}
| align="center" colspan="2" |{{IPAlink|u}}, {{IPAlink|uː}}
|-
! align="left"|[[Mid vowel|Mid]]
| align="center"|{{IPAlink|e}}, {{IPAlink|eː}}
|
| align="center"|{{IPAlink|o}}, {{IPAlink|oː}}
|-
! align="left"|[[Open vowel|Open]]
|
| align="center" colspan="2" |{{IPAlink|a}}, {{IPAlink|aː}}
|}

Although it is commonly claimed that vowel realisations (pronunciations) in Māori show little variation, linguistic research has shown this not to be the case.{{sfn|Bauer|1993|page=537}}{{efn|Bauer mentions that Biggs 1961 announced a similar finding.}}

Vowel length is phonemic, but four of the five long vowels occur in only a handful of word roots, the exception being {{IPA|/aː/}}.{{sfn|Bauer|1997|page=536}}{{efn|Bauer even raised the possibility of analysing Māori as really having six vowel phonemes, ''a, ā, e, i, o, u'' ({{IPA|[a, aː, ɛ, i, ɔ, ʉ]}}).}} As noted above, it has recently become standard in Māori spelling to indicate a long vowel with a macron. For older speakers, long vowels tend to be more peripheral and short vowels more centralised, especially with the low vowel, which is long {{IPA|[aː]}} but short {{IPA|[ɐ]}}. For younger speakers, they are both {{IPA|[a]}}. For older speakers, {{IPA|/u/}} is only fronted after {{IPA|/t/}}; elsewhere it is {{IPA|[u]}}. For younger speakers, it is fronted {{IPA|[ʉ]}} everywhere, as with the corresponding phoneme in [[New Zealand English]]. Due to the influence of New Zealand English, the vowel [e] is raised to be near [i], so that ''pī'' and ''kē'' (or ''piki'' and ''kete'') now largely share the very same vowel space.<ref name=Rev>[[Ghil'ad Zuckermann|Zuckermann, Ghil'ad]] (2020), [[w:en:Revivalistics|''Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond'']], [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revivalistics-9780199812790 Oxford University Press] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125062747/https://global.oup.com/academic/product/revivalistics-9780199812790?cc=us&lang=en& |date=25 November 2020 }}. {{ISBN|9780199812790}} / {{ISBN|9780199812776}}</ref>{{rp|198–199}}

Beside [[monophthong]]s Māori has many [[diphthong]] vowel phonemes. Although any short vowel combinations are possible, researchers disagree on which combinations constitute diphthongs.{{sfn|Harlow|2007|p=69}} [[Formant]] frequency analysis distinguish {{IPA|/aĭ/, /aĕ/, /aŏ/, /aŭ/, /oŭ/}} as diphthongs.{{sfn|Harlow|2007|p=79}}
As in many other Polynesian languages, diphthongs in Māori vary only slightly from sequences of adjacent vowels, except that they belong to the same syllable, and all or nearly all sequences of nonidentical vowels are possible. All sequences of nonidentical short vowels occur and are phonemically distinct.{{sfn|Harlow|1996|page= 1}}{{sfn|Bauer|1997|page=534}}