I'm new to this topic.
An elementary Hawiian book showed Hawaiian to be excellently consistently head-initial, in word order--meaning that modifiers consistently followed what they modified. If I remember correctly, adjectives came after their nouns, verbs began sentences, etc.
But when I looked at a more detailed description of Maori, it said that Maori does a word-order reversal in negative statements. I was disappointed, because that spoils the neat consistent head-initial word-order.
That wouldn't bother me if someone could tell me why Maori does that word-order reversal. Any suggestions for what movtivated the word-order reversal? Is it to make negative statements easier to recognize, or make them stand out better by the fact that they're said so differently?
Another question: Of course if one is going to be in New Zealand, there's a lot of good reason to study Maori. But let me ask this: Would proficiency in Maori improve someone's qualification for being admitted immigration to New Zealand?
Ok, probably not. But I'd still appreciate any answers (to either or both of my questions).
I guess that there are many thousands of Maoris (surely nearly all) who are fluent in both Maori and English. Therefore it's difficult to imagine how proficiency in Maori could be a valuable qualification for immigrants. What would you say on that questionn?
So: If I want to live in New Zealand, would studying Maori improve my chances of immigrating there?
Unmundisto