Māori language Māori phrase "kia kaha", "be strong", is frequently encountered as an indication of moral support for someone starting a stressful undertaking or otherwise in a difficult situation. Many other words such as "whānau" (meaning "family") and "kai" (meaning "food") are also widely understood and used by New Zealanders. Māori language Māori (; ), also known as te reo ("the language"), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of New Zealand. Closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian, it became one of New Zealand's official languages in 1987. The number of speakers of
Noun phrase rules of the language in question; for English, see English articles.) In the original X-bar theory, the two respective types of entity are called noun phrase (NP) and N-bar (N, N′). Thus in the sentence "Here is the big house", both "house" and "big house" are N-bars, while "the big house" is a noun phrase. In the sentence "I like big houses", both "houses" and "big houses" are N-bars, but "big houses" also functions as a noun phrase (in this case without an explicit determiner). In some modern theories of syntax, however, what are called "noun phrases" above are no