Ma¯ori has gone mainstream
La langue maorie gagne en popularité
Regain de popularité pour la langue maorie en Nouvelle-Zélande.
Les Maoris représentent environ 15 % de la population néo-zélandaise. Leur culture a été sévèrement réprimée et a frôlé l’extinction à plusieurs reprises lorsque les colons européens se sont installés sur l’île au XIXe siècle. Ce n’est qu’en 1987 que le maori est devenu l'une des langues officielles du pays. Mais les temps ont changé et, aujourd’hui, en Nouvelle-Zélande, tout le monde veut apprendre à le parler !
Max Smitheram, 54, has attempted to learn te reo Māori (the Māori language) on numerous occasions, but he has never stuck with it – until now. A pakeha [European New Zealander], Smitheram attends free weekly classes and practises at home with his Uruguayan partner, who is also learning the language. “I had a longstanding wish to learn Māori. It is really interesting to have the opportunity to understand different ways of thinking and understand more about my home,” said Smitheram, an environmental planner.
1. to attempt tenter, entreprendre / to stick, stuck, stuck with it s'y tenir / to attend assister à, suivre / class ici, cours / longstanding de longue date / way façon. 2. Smitherham is not alone. Te reo is undergoing a revival in New Zealand, with jam-packed classes and waiting lists now common. Māori language teachers from Auckland in the North Island to Dunedin and Invercargill in the South say they are unable to meet demand for their services and free classes routinely draw hundreds of students.
A STRIKING COMEBACK
3. John McCaffery, a language expert at the University of Auckland school of education,
2. to undergo, underwent, undergone connaître (fig.) / revival renaissance, retour / jam-packed complet / common courant, habituel / to meet, met, met ici, répondre à, satisfaire / routinely régulièrement / to draw, drew, drawn attirer. says the language is thriving, with other indigenous peoples travelling to New Zealand to learn how Māori has made such a striking comeback. “It has been really dramatic, the past three years in particular, Māori has gone mainstream,” he said.
4. According to Statistics New Zealand, the proportion of Māori people able to hold an everyday conversation in te reo decreased 3.7% 3. striking spectaculaire / to thrive, thrived or throve, thrived or thriven prospérer, gagner en importance/popularité / people ici, peuple, tribu, communauté / dramatic spectaculaire. 4. according to d'après, selon / proportion pourcentage, nombre / to decrease diminuer /
between 1996 and 2013. But anecdotal evidence suggests numbers of non-Māori speakers of the language are rising, as are young Māori adults and professionals, who would not have been captured in the last census.
5. Big business is on board, too. Google has launched a Māori version of its website, Vodafone has helped Google Maps record more accurate Māori pronunciations, Disney has released a Māori version of the hit Polynesian film Moana, and Fletcher Building has rolled out bilingual signs on all its construction sites. “There’s an increasing sense that te reo is good for identifying your business as committed to New Zealand,” said Ngahiwi Apanui, chief executive of the Māori Language Commission.
NEW ATTITUDES
6. The status of te reo as an increasingly admired language – with its speakers garnering respect – is a long way from the period following the second world war when Māori speakers were chastised for using their language. Young Māori recall being beaten or whipped for speaking te reo in schools and government institutions such as orphanages, and at home more Māori gave up on the language and learned English to get jobs as a vast migration from rural to urban began. By the 1980s, fewer than 20% of Māori spoke te reo.
7. Now it is very different. According to surveys by Te Puni Kōkiri, a
anecdotal evidence (inv.) preuves anecdotiques, témoignages; ici, chiffres non avérés / to rise, rose, risen augmenter, croître / to capture ici, reprendre (fig.), représenter / census recensement, statistiques, chiffres. 5. to be on board être dans le coup / to launch lancer, créer / accurate précis, juste / to release sortir / to roll out ici, introduire (aussi, produire) / sign panneau / increasing grandissant, de plus en plus présent / sense sentiment / to be committed to être engagé vis-à-vis de / chief executive président. 6. to garner ici, gagner, inspirer (fig.) / a long way from bien/très loin/différent de / to chastise châtier, punir / to recall se souvenir / to whip fouetter / such as tel(les) que / orphanage orphelinat / to give, gave, given up on abandonner, renoncer à / as ici, lorsque / by ici, dans. 7. survey étude, enquête / Māori public policy group, “attitudes towards the Māori language among Māori and nonMāori are improving.” Maori words such as kia ora (hello), Aotearoa (New Zealand), kia kaha (be strong) and kai (food) have long been part of New Zealand English. But the use of others is spreading. The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, recently gave her child a Māori middle name: Te Aroha, Aroha meaning “love”. The gesture was welcomed by tribal groups, who said Ardern was improving relations between the government and Māori people.
8. On New Zealand’s national day, Waitangi, this year, the first 49 seconds of Ardern’s speech on the sacred treaty grounds were delivered in te reo. At Buckingham Palace in April, the prime minister began her Commonwealth toast with a Māori proverb, in a video that has been watched tens of thousands of times.