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The Guardian
Max Smitheram, 54, has attempted to learn te reo Māori (the Māori language) on numerous occasions, but he has never stuck with it – until now. A pakeha
[European New Zealander], Smitheram attends free weekly classes and
practises at home with his Uruguayan partner, who is also learning the
language.
“I had a longstanding wish to learn Māori. It is really
interesting to have the opportunity to understand different ways of
thinking and understand more about my home,” said Smitheram, an
environmental planner. “It is an important part of the heritage and
identity of New Zealand.”
Smitherham is not alone. Te reo is
undergoing a revival in New Zealand, with jam-packed classes and waiting
lists now common. Māori language teachers from Auckland in the North
Island to Dunedin and Invercargill in the South say they are unable to
meet demand for their services and free classes routinely draw hundreds
of students.
John McCaffery, a language expert at the University
of Auckland school of education, says the language is thriving, with
other indigenous peoples travelling to New Zealand to learn how Māori
has made such a striking comeback. “It has been really dramatic, the
past three years in particular, Māori has gone mainstream,” he said.
“What we’re seeing is a clear indication that the language’s status and
prestige has risen dramatically and research shows that is one of the
key indicators of whether children and young people will be interested
and committed to learning it.”
According to Statistics New
Zealand, the proportion of Māori people able to hold an everyday
conversation in te reo decreased 3.7% between 1996 and 2013. But
anecdotal evidence suggests numbers of non-Māori speakers of the
language are rising, as are young Māori adults and professionals, who
would not have been captured in the last census.
Big business is
on board, too. Google has launched a Māori version of its website,
Vodafone has helped Google Maps record more accurate Māori
pronunciations, Disney has released a Māori version of the hit
Polynesian film Moana, and Fletcher Building has rolled out bilingual signs on all its construction sites.
“There’s
an increasing sense that te reo is good for identifying your business
as committed to New Zealand,” said Ngahiwi Apanui, chief executive of
the Māori Language Commission. McCaffery echoed his point, saying more
than a third of Māori teaching graduates were snapped up by big business
keen to build stronger relationships with Māori and tribal groups with
significant financial portfolios.
The status of te reo as an
increasingly admired language – with its speakers garnering respect – is
a long way from the period following the second world war when Māori
speakers were chastised for using their language. Young Māori recall
being beaten or whipped for speaking te reo in schools and government
institutions such as orphanages, and at home more Māori gave up on the
language and learned English to get jobs as a vast migration from rural
to urban began. By the 1980s, fewer than 20% of Māori spoke te reo.
Now
it is very different. According to surveys by Te Puni Kōkiri, a Māori
public policy group, “attitudes towards the Māori language among Māori
and non-Māori are improving”, and “the Māori language currently enjoys a
high status in Māori society and also positive acceptance by the
majority of non-Māori New Zealanders.”
Maori words such as kia ora (hello), Aotearoa (New Zealand), kia kaha (be strong) and kai
(food) have long been part of New Zealand English. But the use of
others is spreading. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, recently gave
her child a Māori middle name: Te Aroha, Aroha meaning “love”. The
gesture was welcomed by tribal groups, who said Ardern was improving
relations between the government and Māori people and also sharpening
her own language skills.
On New Zealand’s national day, Waitangi,
this year, the first 49 seconds of Ardern’s speech on the sacred treaty
grounds were delivered in te reo, while former prime minister Bill
English spoke te reo for five minutes. Current Labour ministers Nanaia
Mahuta and Peeni Henare are fluent speakers while the Green party
co-leader, Marama Davidson, learnt as an adult.
At Buckingham
Palace in April, the prime minister began her Commonwealth toast with a
Māori proverb, in a video that has been watched tens of thousands of
times.
In June, the Māori heavy-metal band Alien Weaponry’s album Tūwent
right to number one in New Zealand and has had more than a million
streams on Spotify, while last year Wairua by the Māori group Maimoa
Music was the most-watched YouTube clip in New Zealand, seen more than
5.5m times. In 2016 the Māori pop song Maimoatia shot straight to the
top of the iTunes chart in New Zealand, knocking Justin Timberlake off
the number one position. Producer Marama Gardiner, a fluent te reo
speaker, said the song was designed to build confidence in young
speakers of te reo, who could sometimes feel shy practising their
language skills. “I want people to be singing a great te reo song all
over the world. That would be such a boost of confidence for speakers in
New Zealand, that their indigenous language is not dying but adapting.”
A
larger range of Māori programming has also played a significant role in
normalising the language, including publicly funded Māori TV, whose
presenters and journalists speak only in Māori, with captions provided.
All
signage is now bilingual in government offices, hospitals and most
public spaces and the first bilingual children’s playground was opened
in Rotorua this year.
Mainstream broadcasters on commercial
channels such as TVNZ and TV3 have shown a commitment to using Māori
live on air and ignore critics who complain of feeling excluded.
TV presenter Kanoa Lloyd uses te reo words on her prime-time show.
Television
news presenter Kanoa Lloyd, of Māori descent, began introducing te reo
words to her weather reports in 2015 and received a torrent of
complaints and online abuse. She has continued to use te reo on her
prime-time show The Project. The governor-general, Dame Patsy
Reddy, revealed this year that she had started learning te reo, but said
she was concerned about the shortage of Māori teachers nationwide.
Last week the Labour minister Kelvin Davis held a hui
[meeting] with Māori language experts, seeking their advice on how to
get more New Zealand teachers speaking the language, so they could teach
eager students. Davis is himself a conversational Māori speaker. “We
want them to have the confidence and competence to be able to weave te
reo into their lessons, [and] to normalise te reo in the classroom,” he
said.
“We want all New Zealanders to feel that te reo is just a
normal part of our lives and that we can switch in and out of languages
as we see fit.”
Māori language experts say the language has never
been more widely used, normalised or respected. The dark days, they say,
of Māori speakers being beaten and punished are long gone.
“I
think there is increasing awareness that there is intrinsic value in
learning te reo, that it is the language of this country,” said Dr
Arapera Bella Ngaha, who is studying the revitalisation of te reo at
Auckland university. She relearned te reo as an adult after she was
banned from using it at boarding school. “It has become cool and I am
very happy about that. For a long time we thought it was over.”
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