The fricatives

Devoicing of voiced fricatives was commented on as being a feature of general New Zealand English, but it is an even stronger feature of Maori English. Again figures of around 20% total devoicing are cited. The discussion in the literature centers on /z/ devoicing, but the other voiced fricatives are also devoiced, though we have no quantitative studies of the extent of such devoicing.

The dental fricatives are sometimes replaced, not by labio-dentals (as might be expected given both English variation and the structure of Maori) but by affricates, [tθ] and [dð].