Wake up - and smell the hangi (+audio)

Kia ora and welcome to te wiki o te reo Maori.

That's Maori Language Week for those who struggle with anything Maori outside of an All Blacks' haka, a decent hangi or a friendly ''kia ora bro''.

Now, before you all start ranting that it's just PC rubbish and pointing out that Maori get enough preferential treatment as it is   from government handouts to a rugby team (not to mention prison cells and diabetes wards)    just take a deep breath and calm down for a minute.

Certainly, that's what I had to do last week when the issue of appropriate use of what is an official language of this country cropped up in the ifWaikato Timesnf newsroom.

On Wednesday last week the ifTimes nfhad a lovely, heart-warming story on the front page about 84-year-old James Rawiri graduating from his te reo course.

Eighty-four years old and learning his own language for the first time. That's inspiring stuff. In the process of putting together the newspaper, several headlines were bandied about and one of them  Congrats koro   I thought had a nice touch to it.

Not too formal, easily understood (or so I thought) and quite a catchy little combination of words.

But no-one would understand what it means, the newspaper's sub-editors claimed, and if people didn't understand it, then they wouldn't buy the paper. ''We're in the business of selling papers,'' they told me.

Funny that. I know we have to sell newspapers but I also thought we were meant to be educating, informing and entertaining readers.

Anyway, the argument was lost and the headline got changed to, yawn, Finding the right words.

Which is what I'm trying to do now.

I thought we'd come a long way in the 39 years since Naida Glavish caused an uproar by answering the phone on the Post Office telephone exchange with ''kia ora Tolls''.

Of course, we have come a long way since then and that's a good thing.

But the more things change, the more they remain the same.

It was only 11 years ago when there was more outrage as Hinewehi Mohi belted out the national anthem in te reo at Twickenham during the Rugby World Cup.  Not everyone was upset with that of course. It's a fair bet the more than 500,000 people of Maori descent weren't too unhappy about it. Heck, they may have actually enjoyed hearing their language being used in such a public context.

It's another sign of how far we have progressed that hearing the national anthem in both te reo and English is nowadays accepted practice, part of our kaupapa, if you will.

Most people even know a few lines of the te reo version and more people sing it with pride  Leg 1these days than when all we got was a rather tuneless little dirge being sung solely in English. But clearly, from the experience here last week, we still have a long way to go. Baby steps and all that though. Proponents of matters Maori  including te reo  are nothing if not patient.

These days words such as marae, mana, kaumatua, iwi, whakapapa, tamariki and maunga are commonplace.

 It's not unusual to hear people conversing in te reo in central Hamilton and plenty of non-Maori use kia ora  often combined with a hongi  to greet people as a matter of course. More power to them.

It actually strikes me as rather odd that in the Waikato,  where about 20 per cent of the population is Maori  in 2010, there are still people who don't understand what seem pretty simple words in te reo.

It's not as if I'm a fluent te reo speaker and some of my best friends are pakeha but I think it's good to incorporate te reo words that I do know into everyday conversation.

 Over time, those words become part of the vernacular and we're all better for it.

Maori are a young population and they're breeding, fast. Maori are not going anywhere (as if they had somewhere else to go) and the  use of te reo is going to grow among both Maori and non-Maori  whether we like it or not.

For those who continue to consign the language to the margins, it's time to wake up and smell the hangi.

It's often these same people who complain that immigrants should discard their cultures and adapt to our way of life.  Perhaps that doesn't apply to them.

This week the ifWaikato Timesnf  is running several stories about Maori Language Week  just as we do during plenty of other awareness weeks  and you can choose to read them or not.  I'd encourage you to read them though and perhaps have a go at using a few words where you can.  There's not a lot else that makes us unique in this country.  Kia ora. 

 

 

LEARN TO SPEAK MAORI

During Te Wiki O Te Reo Maori, the Times will run lists of ten words in te reo Maori and their meaning.

- hui: A meeting or gathering.
- kai: food.
- waiata: song.
- iti: small.
- tangi: An abbreviation of tangihanga (funeral) and also to cry.
- aroha: love, affection.
- koha: a gift given by guests to hosts, often money or food.
- taonga: treasured possessions.
- whenua: land. Also the afterbirth or placenta. 
- upoko: The head, with which we think.

- © Fairfax NZ News