> > Wrong. A "tangi" is, specifically, a Maori traditional funeral. The average non-Maori New Zealander would say "funeral". I stand to be corrected on this, but I also think that the average Maori would also say "funeral" when speaking English, unless it was in reference to an actual tangi and not just a standard funeral. "Tangi" has crossed over into standard NZ English, but still only refers to the traditional Maori ceremony, which is usually several days long.
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> Thanks for the clarification. Just what IS it about the traditional tangi that seems to have captured the Western imagination? I know nothing about it, other than it was a Maori thing.

It took a while, but I found this link which gives a summary of what might normally happen at a modern tangi. It's written for a NZ audience, so a lot of the Maori words aren't translated. You should be able to get the general idea, though.

In the process, I found a Maori site which is not really useful to link here, except that it mentioned going to somebody's "tangi and funeral", which makes it even more obvious that the two words refer to entirely different things.