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It's both IBARW and Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) and I had big plans for the latter and it's Thursday and of course I have done none of it.
For those of you reading this who are not from New Zealand Aotearoa: te reo Māori is the language spoken by the indigenous population of my country, the Māori. After the trickle of European settlement became a flood in the middle of the 19th century, the Māori population underwent a decline both numerically and culturally, through sickness, the progress of the Land Wars (plenty of Pākehā died there too, but there was a very high replacement rate of settlers arriving from Britain) and ultimately in the 20th century assimilation movements (including the traditional settlement tool of white people everywhere, "Don't speak your language in my school.") Urbanisation, particularly around the world wars, led to estrangement of Māori from their iwi; and so on, and so forth. A cultural revival started in the 1960s gave rise to things like the Waitangi Tribunal, kōhanga reo (language nests - exclusively te reo-speaking preschools). However, only a small number of New Zealanders speak te reo (about 4%).
I am taking a te reo Māori course through te Wānanga o Aotearoa (literally "the University of New Zealand" but actually the Māori Tertiary Education Institute.) It's a one year course designed to let you "take te reo Māori beyond kia ora" - one three-hour class a week focused chiefly on basic conversational skills. It's part one of three courses which are designed to take you from no knowledge whatsoever to fluency or near fluency - I'd like to take all three but it's likely I'll only be able to take this one and perhaps the next one. Last class we did an exercise for te Wiki o te Reo Māori asking: why did we decide to take te reo? Here are some of the answers (a majority of the people in the class are Pākehā (subset European), with one or two foreigners.)
"When I first arrived in New Zealand I felt very disconnected from the country. Learning te reo and tikanga Māori (Māori cultural practices) helped me feel rooted here."
"When I was overseas I realised how important te reo was in our language. Hearing it spoken made me feel at home when I came back."
"I am part Māori and my family has never acknowledged that. I am just learning to understand and accept my cultural heritage and to 'feel' Māori and connected with my past." (Two different people said almost this same story - the only two students with Māori background.)
"My family stopped speaking te reo with my maternal grandmother who didn't teach it to her children. If I and my cousin hadn't learnt to speak te reo, there would be no-one in our line who would be able to speak for us, help us negotiate maraes (meeting houses)." (This was my teacher, who is now more or less fluent.)
"I never had a chance to learn when I was younger and I always wanted to. This is a treat for me."
"I work with a lot of Māori and I feel that to be respectful I should learn some of their language and culture." (There were variants of this in both drama and in office-ish/political activist roles.)
"I believe we should be a bilingual country and to get that everyone has to learn te reo."
"I am Pākehā but the number of Māori in my family is reaching critical mass - I need to learn te reo to demonstrate my respect and love for them."
This is what I said:
"I had a lot of opportunities to learn te reo and I never took advantage of them, I didn't care about it. When I was younger my best friend was a first-language Māori speaker. (VV unusual in the semi-urban environment where I grew up.) She went to kōhanga and kura kaupapa but it was still difficult for her to speak it regularly. She just had her first baby and I asked her if she spoke te reo to him and she said sometimes, but it was mostly hard because it wasn't spoken that much around her. And that's when I started caring, when I decided that it was my responsibility to make it easier for her to speak Māori to her child, so that he has the chance to be fluent in te reo, so the language can stay alive - because if New Zealanders don't speak Māori no-one's speaking Māori."
I don't know if that's a good reason or not. I guess I don't know if any of them are good reasons and I don't think I care, because I do think we have a responsibility to do this as New Zealanders. We have a responsibility to make sure this language survives; we have a responsibility to make sure this culture survives. We have this responsibility because it was here first and it's valuable and it needs taking care of, and most of the way to do this is for us not to interfere, for us to be respectful of their needs but not tell Māori what their needs are. But we can, we should, we must speak Māori, because fluency in a language is difficult to pass along.
And because ko te reo te taikura ō te whakaaro mārama - that's a Māori whakatauki (proverb), which means language is the key to understanding.
So this week - alright, there's hardly any of it left! But let's try anyway - try to answer the phone with "kia ora." Try to say tēnā koe and ka kite ano. Morena means good morning; pomarie means goodnight. I bet you can count to ten in te reo. Kia kaha means be strong. "Kei te pēhea koe?" means "how are you doing?" "Kei te pai ahau!" means "I'm doing fine."
Check out resources like this or this. Give it a go! Kia kaha!
For those of you reading this who are not from New Zealand Aotearoa: te reo Māori is the language spoken by the indigenous population of my country, the Māori. After the trickle of European settlement became a flood in the middle of the 19th century, the Māori population underwent a decline both numerically and culturally, through sickness, the progress of the Land Wars (plenty of Pākehā died there too, but there was a very high replacement rate of settlers arriving from Britain) and ultimately in the 20th century assimilation movements (including the traditional settlement tool of white people everywhere, "Don't speak your language in my school.") Urbanisation, particularly around the world wars, led to estrangement of Māori from their iwi; and so on, and so forth. A cultural revival started in the 1960s gave rise to things like the Waitangi Tribunal, kōhanga reo (language nests - exclusively te reo-speaking preschools). However, only a small number of New Zealanders speak te reo (about 4%).
I am taking a te reo Māori course through te Wānanga o Aotearoa (literally "the University of New Zealand" but actually the Māori Tertiary Education Institute.) It's a one year course designed to let you "take te reo Māori beyond kia ora" - one three-hour class a week focused chiefly on basic conversational skills. It's part one of three courses which are designed to take you from no knowledge whatsoever to fluency or near fluency - I'd like to take all three but it's likely I'll only be able to take this one and perhaps the next one. Last class we did an exercise for te Wiki o te Reo Māori asking: why did we decide to take te reo? Here are some of the answers (a majority of the people in the class are Pākehā (subset European), with one or two foreigners.)
"When I first arrived in New Zealand I felt very disconnected from the country. Learning te reo and tikanga Māori (Māori cultural practices) helped me feel rooted here."
"When I was overseas I realised how important te reo was in our language. Hearing it spoken made me feel at home when I came back."
"I am part Māori and my family has never acknowledged that. I am just learning to understand and accept my cultural heritage and to 'feel' Māori and connected with my past." (Two different people said almost this same story - the only two students with Māori background.)
"My family stopped speaking te reo with my maternal grandmother who didn't teach it to her children. If I and my cousin hadn't learnt to speak te reo, there would be no-one in our line who would be able to speak for us, help us negotiate maraes (meeting houses)." (This was my teacher, who is now more or less fluent.)
"I never had a chance to learn when I was younger and I always wanted to. This is a treat for me."
"I work with a lot of Māori and I feel that to be respectful I should learn some of their language and culture." (There were variants of this in both drama and in office-ish/political activist roles.)
"I believe we should be a bilingual country and to get that everyone has to learn te reo."
"I am Pākehā but the number of Māori in my family is reaching critical mass - I need to learn te reo to demonstrate my respect and love for them."
This is what I said:
"I had a lot of opportunities to learn te reo and I never took advantage of them, I didn't care about it. When I was younger my best friend was a first-language Māori speaker. (VV unusual in the semi-urban environment where I grew up.) She went to kōhanga and kura kaupapa but it was still difficult for her to speak it regularly. She just had her first baby and I asked her if she spoke te reo to him and she said sometimes, but it was mostly hard because it wasn't spoken that much around her. And that's when I started caring, when I decided that it was my responsibility to make it easier for her to speak Māori to her child, so that he has the chance to be fluent in te reo, so the language can stay alive - because if New Zealanders don't speak Māori no-one's speaking Māori."
I don't know if that's a good reason or not. I guess I don't know if any of them are good reasons and I don't think I care, because I do think we have a responsibility to do this as New Zealanders. We have a responsibility to make sure this language survives; we have a responsibility to make sure this culture survives. We have this responsibility because it was here first and it's valuable and it needs taking care of, and most of the way to do this is for us not to interfere, for us to be respectful of their needs but not tell Māori what their needs are. But we can, we should, we must speak Māori, because fluency in a language is difficult to pass along.
And because ko te reo te taikura ō te whakaaro mārama - that's a Māori whakatauki (proverb), which means language is the key to understanding.
So this week - alright, there's hardly any of it left! But let's try anyway - try to answer the phone with "kia ora." Try to say tēnā koe and ka kite ano. Morena means good morning; pomarie means goodnight. I bet you can count to ten in te reo. Kia kaha means be strong. "Kei te pēhea koe?" means "how are you doing?" "Kei te pai ahau!" means "I'm doing fine."
Check out resources like this or this. Give it a go! Kia kaha!
