E tipu e rea Me pehea tou ao

Tu Tangata, Issue 16, 1 March 1984, Page 36

E tipu e rea Me pehea tou ao

By Na Tainui Stephens

I te tuatahi me mihi kau ake ahau ki a ngai tatou e tamara ma. Tena koutou. Tena ano tatou i roto i nga tini ahuatanga o te wa. Tena ra tatou e kopikopiko haere nei i te motu, e kimi haere nei i te mea huna e kia nei te iti kahurangi. No reira kia ora mai ano tatou.

Ko tetahi o nga korero onamata e penei ana “Korerotia ko wai ratou”. Ka mutu koianei ko tetahi tu ahua e tihae ake nei i o tatou whatumanawa, e huri haere nei hoki i te hinengaro o tena o tena o tatou.

Ae ra, te takitini o tatou he Maori. Ahakoa ra ko te ahua o te kiri mau tonu, ko te kori o te tinana mau tonu, ko te ahua o te reo e ngaro haere ana i a tatou. He aha i penei ai?

Mai ano i te timatanga o te noho tahi o Tauiwi me taua mete Maori, ka tukinotia to tatou reo. E tino mohio ana tatou mo nga tamariki nohinohi i a ratou i korero Maori kei te kura. Kua patua a ratou ringa kite taura. Ana, ko te korero ke a nga pakeke me nga kaumatua Pena ka tae mai te wa a te Pakeha he ao hou tenei, he ao rereke. Kia waihotia nga mea Maori i muri.

Penei tonu te whakaaro heke iho nei ki tenei whakapaparanga. Otira no taku hoa wahine e kopu ana kua whakaaro au kia mohio ai ta maua hua ki tona reo matua. He rite pu tenei whakaaro oku ki o o maua tini hoa. Engari he huarahi uaua rawa tenei, ehara i te ngawari. Ka whanau mai ta maua tamaiti ka nui rawa nga wawata mona. Me pehea tana tu i roto i tenei ao pohauhau? Na tatou ano tenei ao, ma tatou hoki e

Tainui Stephens is an investigating officer with the office of the Race Conciliator in Auckland.

hanga te ao ma nga reanga kahore ano kia puta mai. Ka mihi whanui ahau ki nga pepi katoa o te motu. Haere mai. My son usually wakes up early in the mornings. When I go into his room to pick him up out of his cot he looks up at me and says “Hello”. When I leave for work he says “Byebye”. He is barely a year and a half old and smiles a lot when he talks to his Dad and experiments with new wet and dry sounds. Yet every time his eyes twinkle and his tiny voice says hello or byebye; I hurt a little inside. Since he entered this world I have spoken what Maori I know to him constantly. He attends a Kohanga Reo. He laps up little bedtime stories in Maori and in fact demands them. His first clear words however are English ones. It is not a matter of seeking and placing blame or fault. This is a situation which I would suppose is going to face many young parents who wish for their children a chance to know “Who they are!” I am a little disillusioned and feel that maybe some good can come from putting to paper some personal experiences. Maybe others will recognise them.

When folk hear me speaking Maori to my son they are often intrigued. When at my command he shows them his pito or arero they are delighted. They invariably express the opinion that he will speak Maori fluently by the time he attends school. Quite apart from recognising my present limitations I have just realised, (and painfully) that no children of mine are going to speak Maori fluently unless some attitudes that we possess are looked at carefully.

I am one of many who have discovered what my taha Maori means, and the potential it holds. Several years ago I started to learn the language and was told then that it is an easy language to learn. I do not believe for one minute that it is. Simply saying things in Maori may not be too hard. The difficult thing however is that you also have to “think Maori” before you can “speak Maori”. Maori unlike some languages was concieved in the mind and born on the mouth rather than on paper. I feel that the current emphasis on books needs to be diverted to some extent, and focused on to the people from whence it came. This is a more natural way of learning. Institute it and perhaps Maori may be as “easy to learn” as some say. At present you can be discouraged by learning from a book and not being understood.

Probably too, the longer one delays learning the language, the harder it becomes to do so. The changes of adolescence and the responsibilities of parenthood are powerful reasons to dissuade one from learning the language. We need to be aware though that it takes only a handful of generations for any tongue to fall from everyday use to demise. I have often been told to slow down

by my peers and elders as I pursue Te Reo and “things Maori” in general. Zealous people like me are, I suspect, like that out of a sense of anxiety rather than arrogance; worry for nga taonga a nga Tupuna rather than superficial haste. Recognising that to some, the clock on the Maori day is winding slowly down, many of us are trying to wind it up again, hard. While still others are looking to buy a new model, maybe a digital one! I personally like the oldstyle clock, but it requires effort rather than quartz to keep it ticking. If you have been brought up without something which is later discovered, there may often be a need to “make up for lost time”. This has strengthened my resolve for our children to know not just their taha Pakeha, but their taha Maori. The children will be the guardians of whatever language we bequeath them. Unfortunately we the teachers are often lacking in resources ourselves. The resolve then becomes obligation, then: responsibility.

Much has been said, written, and debated about concerning the Kohanga Reo. There are, as is to be expected, some administrative difficulties and it is a pity that some are claiming both here and overseas that the language nests are a success. They are not that yet, although the potential is certainly there.

I sincerely feel that one of the main “target” groups of the Kohanga Reo should be the parents. While there are many who whole-heartedly support their children in learning Maori; there are those parents who view the Kohanga as being merely a convenient and relatively inexpensive child care facility.

Parents have, as far as the language is concerned, a responsibility to create a Maori “atmosphere” outside Kohanga hours. This support is vital to a childs language acquisition. Maori cannot and will not be learnt solely between the weekday hours of B.ooam and 5.00 pm. It requires a total commitment that also needs balance lest Maori speaking children are made to feel embarrassed if their friends or relations (or parents!) do not understand them. To achieve this degree of commitment, parents really need to learn at least some of the basics of the language. We could help by example and when seeing our children climb onto the table say “Heke iho!” or “Kaua e mahi pena!”. This would be somewhat preferable to: “Hey you fellas get off that bloody table!!” The concept of Te Kohanga Reo does not, I believe, end with paying the weekly fees.

We also need to appreciate that those children who do learn to speak Maori are going to form an elite group whether they like it or not. There are still so many young Maori people who are missing out. Maybe the fee is just out of the reach of the budget, or maybe

both parents work and become ineligible as a result for assistance from certain Kohanga. Again, we all need to make this commitment, not just the lucky few.

Support above all needs to be gotten from those who already speak Maori. We as learners need in the first instance to be brave enough to jump in the deep end, open our mouths and minds and give it a go. Maori is not popularly a written language: it is a spoken one. It certainly is not one to be just thought about and mulled over. Fear of making mistakes is a terrible inhibiting factor to those wanting to test what they have learnt. That fear needs to be overcome. Fluent speakers of Maori need to be patient with we learners but above all they must speak Maori with us. I have greeted kaumatua with “Tena ra koe e kara” and recieved “Hi”, “Pehea ana koe e kui” and recieved “Oh not bad boy!” I have also tried holding conversations with speakers of Maori. All I have gotten in reply sometimes is English. I realise that these people may well be at times hoha of our fractured Maori but it is hard enough for us to get going, let alone have to suffer the embarrassment of having your efforts unrewarded.

Young ones like my son may certainly understand the language through having it spoken to him, but until such time as he listens to adults speak freely in Maori, he and others will be unable to speak it. It is interesting to note that the offspring of people with heavy European, Scots, or Irish accents do not inherit those accents. Rather they speak the language of the majority group. Maori needs therefore, to be seen as not just the language of the marae, but as an everyday medium of communication.

I feel sincerely that Te Reo Maori will not survive through the efforts of Maori alone. Pakeha people who have a sincere wish to learn Maori should be permitted to do so. They need to see the language as part of New Zealand’s heritage. This can be a contentious

point but I am endeavouring to be realistic when I suggest that our future can be harmonious only if it is a dual one. Nga parirau o te ao tangata; he tama wahine, he tama tane. Nga parirau o te ao Maori; he tama Pakeha, he tama Maori.

So what of the future of Te Reo Maori? The points raised in this article are hardly new. They are however, new and real to me as one person. The years between now and the turn of the century will determine whether or not Maori as a living language will survive. I think that it probably will, and history does have a precedent.

In the short space of one hundred years the Hebrew language was nurtured from a state where it was not spoken to the present where it is the native tongue of the people of Israel. This immense task was started by one man Ben Yehuda. He decided that his first child would be the first in over a thousand years to grow up with Hebrew as his first language. It seemed impossible but he persevered. This example is worth remembering and personally gives me cause for long term optimism. I believe that our Reo Maori will live. What life it has however, is largely up to us, now!

It is a Sunday morning, my wife and I went to the David Bowie concert last night at Western Springs. Our boy is in the living room happily destroying the $6.00 concert programme. I got up early to finish this article and he followed soon after, he lured me to an already open refrigerator door, pointed to his cup of fruit juice and said: “Ipu?”

Kia hatia ra. Koianei etahi pitopito whakaaro oku mo to tatou Reo matua. Kia korero Maori tatou ki a tatou ano kei mahue iho hei taonga noa. Ko te reo te kakahu o te whakaaro. Kia tika ai nga whakaaro kei taretare o tatou kakahu.

Tena ano tatou i roto i o tatou mate aitua. Ara, ratou i kawhakia ai kite ao wairua. Haere koutou kite moenga i waihangatia hei wahi okiokinga ma tatou ma te iwi. No reira haere e nga mate, haere, haere, haere atu. Ka huri.