Making te reo part of everyday life is harder than expected

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Sarah Moore says week 2 of her te reo class has made her head hurt.

Sarah Moore is taking part in a 12-week te reo course in an effort to show her irāmutu (niece) her whole family values her Māori heritage. This is the second instalment.

OPINION: 'Your māhi kainga (homework) is to take your learning outside of the classroom and start making the reo part of your everyday life.'

It sounded easy. It wasn't.

Yesterday marked 31 years since the Māori Language Act was introduced, making te reo Māori an official language of New Zealand. Thirty-one years of recognition, preceded by 127 years of no recognition – the reason our lecturer's challenge is made all the more challenging today.

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

* Learning te reo has made me whole**

Other than interchangeably wishing our receptionist mōrena or ata mārie (I'm still unsure if one should preside over the other) and the occasional perfunctory kia ora to my colleagues, using te reo Māori just hasn't really… happened.

However, the conversations about te reo have.

Friends have enquired about the course and my reasons for learning. There have been discussions about the usefulness of te reo Māori today (to be tackled in a future column) and whether it's a 'waste of time' to introduce it to younger generations (also a future column).

Friends I'd long lost touch with have made contact to share their own te reo journeys, and I've had many messages in te reo (which I'm probably years away from translating).

Our Week 2 class made my head hurt. Questions flew between students. Confusion mounted as we tried to apply the rules of English to te reo and pondered over the construction of our pepeha.

Singing was secondary to sentence structure. I walked out of class overwhelmed and with the realisation that AUT's suggestion of five hours a week was going to be the very minimum I'd need to get any good at this.

So, outside of my weekly three-hour class contact, here's what I've been relying on to get a daily te reo fix:

First Thousand Words in Māori – I bought this children's picture book for my niece but whipped it back as it's perfect for grown-ups who learn best with visual prompts.

A Māori Word a Day – it takes seconds to read a single word, and a handful more to commit it to memory. Every morning I read the kupu o te rā (word of the day), and try to find a way to refer back to it during the day. Repeat, repeat, recall.

Māori Dictionary – my go-to for pronunciation. It's the reason I know that witipiki is the Māori word for Weetbix and pāreti is porridge. I'll have mine with huka hāura (brown sugar) thanks.

With more than 92,000 members, Let's Learn Maori appears to be the largest Facebook group committed to 'daily life' reo with admins sharing memes and te reo news.

Also on Facebook, Reobot lets you 'chat' with a bot to practice conversational Māori.

There are many te reo websites but Te Whanake's animated movies and podcasts are definitely worth an explore. Speaking of exploring, Māori Television has plenty of language learning shows on demand, including Dora Mātātoa (Dora the Explorer)!

For major cute factor, download the He aha tēnei? app. Voiced by tamariki with the most adorable voices ever, this will teach you a few basics. The little who reads 'whetū' (star) will warm your manawa (heart).

Toro Mai – next month Massey University launches two new 10-hour introductory online courses in Te Reo Māori and Tikanga Māori. Completely free, they promise to deepen students' understanding and awareness of Māori knowledge via an immersive multi-media platform.

In the meantime, the Toro Mai Facebook group is gaining traction with participants introducing themselves from as far as Dubai, England, Norway, USA and South Africa. The majority are New Zealand-based and there's a collective buzz about joining this reo revolution.

Are you learning te reo too? Please share the the resources you've found most useful in the comments below. Kōrero mai.