Maori

Māori or te reo Māori, commonly te reo ("the language"), is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. New Zealand has 3 official languages Māori, English and New Zealand Sign Language. Linguists classify it within the Eastern Polynesian languages. According to the Maori Language Commission the number of fluent adult speakers fell to about 10,000 in 1995!

The Bible was translated into the Maori languagein the 19th century by missionaries sponsored by the Church Missionary Society, including Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso. The first Maori New Testament was published in 1837 and the first ever edition of the full Maori Bible was published in 1868. Since then, there have been four revisions of the full Bible at intervals of 21 years, 36 years and finally 27 years up to the 1952 edition. The New Zealand Bible Society has a vision for a new translation of the Bible into modern colloquial Maori.