We all have the opportunity to help keep te reo Māori alive

Thursday, 19 July 2018

Sarah Moore is taking on a 12-week te reo class in an effort to show her irāmutu (niece) her whole family values her Māori heritage.

OPINION: I failed two subjects at school: Māori and Accounting. I still remember poor Mr Stubbs, my teacher at Auckland's Avondale College, doing his best to inspire a bunch of 13-year-olds to embrace te reo and encouraging us to practise our pepeha (a traditional introduction).

As you can probably imagine, we were much more enthusiastic about pointing out Westies don't have mountains and rivers, we have hills and oceans. As a teenager in the early '90s I wanted to study the 'rad' subjects – and sadly, Māori just wasn't one of them.

Sarah and Emelia Moore read Te Tanguruhau (The Gruffalo).

Instead I was drawn to the incredibly exotic la langue francaise; I was hooked from the moment I learnt French kids dined on croissants stuffed with chocolate for breakfast. So I French-ified myself through high school and my academic interest in te reo Māori faded away.

Post-school, I left the accounting to my accountant, but I was brought back to te reo time and time again. Questioning why I didn't pay better attention to it, aware that I was surrounded by it, yet ashamed at my everyday pronunciation – especially of the word Māori itself.

**READ MORE:

* Learning te reo has made me whole

* Te reo hits the rail in Auckland

* We can't know our history without te reo**

And then, last year, my little irāmutu (niece) – Emelia Mary Ngahuia Moore – was born, and I realised I had the wonderful opportunity to support her connection to her culture, one that came with its very own language. I knew that the more people she had around her nurturing a bilingual environment, the better – and I also wanted her to grow up knowing her Māori heritage and its reo is respected and valued by her Daddy's side of the family too.

I decided 2018 would be my year of learning and night classes at the School of Philosophy led to enrolling at AUT in the Introduction to Conversational Māori evening classes.

And it was all go.

I bought books (Māori Made Easy, A Māori Word Day, Instant Māori) – and began to teach myself. I started my own at-home immersion programme; I listened to podcasts entirely in Māori while I cooked hapa (dinner). I acknowledged items around the house in their Māori equivalent: rorohiko (computer), wharepaku (toilet), āporo (apple).

I bought Emelia the books Kaua Tuku ma te Kukupa te Pahi e Taraiwa! (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!), Te Anuhe Tino Hiakai (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and Te Tanguruhau (The Gruffalo). I practiced reading them aloud to this tiny 16-month old audience who never once cringed at my many mispronunciations and my awful articulation.

And I brought it to the workplace.

Working for Neighbourly, place names are frequently thrown around between colleagues and I just as frequently caught myself mispronouncing them - Towpo, Towronga, Capitty. But I was okay with that – because each time I said it 'wrong' I realised, and followed up by saying it right. The realisation was the important part.

We all have the opportunity to help keep te reo Māori alive. And why wouldn't we? It's a beautiful language – and it belongs to every one of us who has ever called Aotearoa home.

On Monday I attended my first class at AUT and I was transported straight back to primary school – sans the newspaper poi. This column will follow my 12-week journey as I learn the basics of te reo and gain a better understanding of the value te ao Māori offers to my own life and the world around me.

Kia ora Mr Stubbs, Kia ora.