This is the noise Michael Jackson used to make in most of his songs. I jest, of course. This is in fact a really lovely Māori word that doesn’t have an equivalent in English. It describes that feeling you get from an amazing performance that gives you goosebumps. Here’s a quote from Māori Language Commission chief executive Ngahiwi Apanui on the meaning of ‘ihi’:
‘It's a combination of something spiritual and something physical … It's the kind of x-factor the performer has ... it’s hitting you in the heart and the hair is standing up on the back of your neck and you’re thinking, “wow, this is amazing”.’
‘Ihi’ is often accompanied by ‘wehi’, which describes the impact that ihi has on someone.
Another awesome Māori word that doesn’t have an English equivalent is pōhēhē, a person who wrongly assumes they know something and then continues to insist that they’re right. I think we all know a pōhēhē.
The Māori language is called ‘te reo’, which simply means ‘the language’. It became one of New Zealand’s three official languages in 1987 (the others being English and NZ sign language). Originally there was no written version of it, until European settlers came along. These days the Māori alphabet is made up of 15 letters, two of which are digraphs (which is a fancy way of saying there are two pairs of letters for one sound). Oh, and that little line over the ‘a’ of Māori is called a ‘macron’ (nothing to do with the French president), which tells you it should be pronounced as a long vowel.
The Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa which means ‘land of the long white cloud’ (the much less romantic English name comes from the Dutch province of Zeeland).
[Disclaimer: I’m by no means an expert on te reo, so if you’d like to find out more, head on over to the Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori or Māori Language Commission’s website to find out more.]