Te Aka Māori Dictionary

Te Murumāra Foundation

About this app

Te Aka is a Māori language dictionary that is easy to use by searching for Māori or English words. It includes the ability to filter search results, and to save definitions to a Favourites list. There are currently over 24,000 Māori headword entries in the database, which is being added to over time. An offline dictionary has also been included when internet connectivity is not available.

As well as English meanings, it has example sentences with translations for many entries. It even has photographs and audio clips for Aotearoa/New Zealand native fauna and photographs of flora, important people and other items where a photograph will aid understanding.

In addition to the words one would expect in a traditional dictionary, it also has encyclopaedic entries designed to provide key information about plants, animals, stars, planets, heavenly bodies, important Māori people, key ancestors of traditional narratives, tribal groups, ancestral canoes, song types, musical instruments, Māori names for institutions, country names, place names and other proper names. There are also detailed explanations of key concepts central to Māori culture. Comprehensive explanations for grammatical items are included, with examples of usage, as are idioms and colloquialisms with their meanings and examples.

The Te Aka Maori app is the companion to the popular www.maoridictionary.co.nz website and forms part of the Te Whanake Māori Language learning series.

Ratings and reviews

Great to have an app version of te aka! Largely good, but I have noticed that if offline some words will not be available. I got frustrated when reading a novel and thinking that the author used several words that don't exist, but later (with wifi) they had definitions. If this is to make offline searches faster, please include the option to have the ENTIRE database offline, not a subset of it. I'd rate it 5 stars if that issue is resolved.

Quiz is brilliant for learning kupu but can be hard to find at first (you have to click the star after favouriting a few words and it'll test you on them).

It has incredible potential, however it is glitchy on my mate 9. Doesn't scroll properly. Can't search Māori words with a macron in search bar. My s9 version ran great, however it was missing many entries for some reason so I was best using online version. It's the best available as descriptions are so good, and examples. But it needs a lot of tuning up.

What’s new

Favourites list bug fix