Editing Māori language (section)

=== Syllables and phonotactics ===
[[Syllable]]s in Māori have one of the following forms: '''V, VV, CV, CVV'''. This set of four can be summarised by the notation, '''{{transliteration|mi|italic=no|(C)V(V)}}''', in which the segments in parentheses may or may not be present. A syllable cannot begin with two consonant sounds (the '''[[Digraph (orthography)|digraphs]]''' ''ng'' and ''wh'' represent single consonant '''sounds'''), and cannot end in a consonant, although some speakers may occasionally devoice a final vowel. All possible '''CV''' combinations are grammatical, though ''wo'', ''who'', ''wu'', and ''whu'' occur only in a few loanwords from English such as {{lang|mi|wuru}}, "wool" and {{lang|mi|whutuporo}}, "football".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/M/MaoriLanguage/Pronunciation/en |title=MAORI LANGUAGE – Pronunciation |year=1966 |editor-last=McLintock |editor-first=A. H. |editor-link=Alexander Hare McLintock |website=[[Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966)|Encyclopedia of New Zealand]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024083728/http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/M/MaoriLanguage/Pronunciation/en |archive-date=24 October 2007}}</ref>

As in many other Polynesian languages, e.g., Hawaiian, the rendering of [[loanword]]s from English includes representing every English consonant of the loanword (using the native consonant inventory; English has 24 consonants to 10 for Māori) and breaking up consonant clusters. For example, "Presbyterian" has been borrowed as ''Perehipeteriana''; no consonant position in the loanword has been deleted, but {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/b/}} have been replaced with {{IPA|/h/}} and {{IPA|/p/}}, respectively.

Stress is typically within the last four vowels of a word, with long vowels and diphthongs counting double. That is, on the last four moras. However, stressed moras are longer than unstressed moras, so the word does not have the precision in Māori that it does in some other languages. It falls preferentially on the first long vowel, on the first diphthong if there is no long vowel (though for some speakers never a final diphthong), and on the first syllable otherwise. Compound words (such as names) may have a stressed syllable in each component word. In long sentences, the final syllable before a pause may have a stress in preference to the normal stressed syllable.