Kelvin Davis on Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

This week is Te Reo Maori week. We know because the NZ Herald is calling itself "Te Herora o Aotearoa."

Excellent, great way to go Te Herora.

Now how about a regular page written totally in Te Reo? Maybe monthly, maybe fortnightly, maybe weekly, maybe daily. then people like myself who can read, write and speak the language, could do what English language speakers take for granted on a daily basis by being able to read the news in that other official language of New Zealand.

I have a dream that one day I can walk into any bank, service station, Pak'n'Sav, Post Office, chemist or store and conduct my transactions in Te Reo Maori if I should choose. I also want non-Maori New Zealanders to be able to do the same.

Weren't Maori guaranteed all the rights of British subjects in the Treaty? Would that mean the right to read, write and conduct business in our own language, just like Pakeha can?

In order for Te Reo Maori to flourish, we need the critical mass of New Zealanders to speak Maori to some extent.

Maori can't do it on our own. We have to stop treating Te Reo as a tapu thing and allow it to become common. All those fuddy duddies who lament the modern shortening of the vowels, the poor grammar, the eskewed pronunciation - get over it - unless you really do prefer a dead language. In which case our marae may as well become Community Halls where English is the language of the masses.

I know what the rednecks, bigots and dickheads will say - it's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah.

But who cares what rednecks, bigots and dickheads think? If more New Zealanders spoke Te Reo Maori, the world wouldn't end, the sun would still rise in the east, the sky wouldn't fall in and maybe, just maybe, we'd move a little bit closer to becoming a more culturally cohesive nation.

Fifty years go the Welsh language was in the same state Te Reo Maori is now, but through the efforts of a few, a bit of legislation here and there, Welsh is a thriving language heard and seen in the streets, shops and pubs of Wales as naturally as English.

Maori can't rely on our traditional contexts (marae and home) for language transfer anymore. Many are pretty much buggered, so we need to create non-traditional contexts, that to many will feel pretty forced and unnatural, but without it the language will struggle.

Amongst other things we need to set up Maori speaking happy hours at pubs, Maori writing clubs, Maori immersion trivial pursuit evenings, Maori immersion sports teams, support businesses that have Maori speaking staff, write Maori letters to the editor in newspapers - oh yeah, and have Maori writing for newspapers - so that people like myself can read, react and respond to Te Herora o Aotearoa in Te Reo o nga Rangatira.

Kelvin Davis