Māori influence on New Zealand English part English and part Māori, have developed, the most common of which is probably "half-pai" — often written "half-pie" — meaning incomplete or substandard quality, "pai" being the Māori word for "good". (The portmanteau form "half-pied" is also used, derived from "half-baked".) Similarly, the Māori word ending "-tanga", which has a similar meaning to the English ending "-ness", is occasionally used in hybrid terms such as "kiwitanga" (that is, the state of being a New Zealander). Several Māori words are used in English as lighthearted, or even slang, equivalents of their more common English counterparts. The term "puku" for stomach,
Word order order occur due to topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally assumed to have a basic word order, called the unmarked word order; other, marked word orders can then be used to emphasize a sentence element, to indicate modality (such as an interrogative modality), or for other purposes. For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in "I don't know that", but OSV is also possible: "That I don't know." This process is called topic-fronting (or "topicalization") and is common. In English, OSV is a "marked word order" because it emphasises the object, and is often accompanied by a