Saving a language, one small step at a time

Before I started this year’s journey I worked for more than 15 years as a journalist. You can still make a difference, even if only on a modest scale, with journalism. But if you’re not careful you get disillusioned with humanity. I have been lucky enough to meet some incredible humans. But other times I was left asking myself, ‘‘what on earth did I do to deserve these people?’’

The closest I get to that feeling these days is when I open up Twitter and feel a jarring disconnection from the real and nourishing world of learning te reo, and lurch into a strange simulacrum of current events. In this world, news is reverse-filtered, like bread run through meths.

Twitter is like wrestling with other people’s streams-of-consciousness. It’s people-watching without real people; where the voices in your head are simultaneously real and utterly fake. Seriously, if the climate change doesn’t get us then the Twitter and Facebook will. One day God will come home from school and find his favourite hamsters have beaten each other to death in their cage with their phones and laptops.

Still, after saying that, I can’t rip my own eyes away from the Roman Circus-like entertainment. I feel the sewage pipe thrumming with its load under my fingers, but I still proceed to hit it with a hammer.

Maybe people online are aching for some kind of meaning, and some kind of connection with each other. Maybe they didn’t break the mould when they made Pa¯ keha¯ culture, they broke the machine. Now, we drop off the conveyor belt, one after another, like replicas of replicas of knockoffs. What can we do to be different? And just as importantly, how will we make a difference?

For starters, as we gallop towards the end of 2018 it is time to start thinking about how you will begin saving te reo Ma¯ ori. You can start right now, after reading this column, by learning some of the basics from books or online. But the more formal and intensive courses probably won’t start again till early next year, so you need to plan now.

You see, there’s learning languages, and then there’s saving languages. Here in Aotearoa we are wonderfully rich in many languages, such as Japanese, Spanish, French and Mandarin. They are all spoken in many homes, over many dinner tables. This diversity is a beautiful thing.

And of course we are drenched in English from the second we’re delivered, or step off the plane. But pinned down underneath it all is te reo Ma¯ ori. In most parts of its homeland it was only a generation or two away from silence. If you feel discomfort – or shame, or sadness, or anger – about what was stolen, then I implore you to do something about it.

Become the first person on your block to be able to hold conversations in te reo. Become the first person in your workplace to chat in te reo. Become the first person in your family to be able to hold a grandchild and whisper in her ear that you love her and she is a treasure, in te reo.

As I said, now is the time to start planning for this. Get online, make phone calls, talk to people and start getting focused on making it happen.

I started learning te reo Ma¯ ori this year, fulltime in full immersion, at Te Wa¯ nanga o Raukawa, north of Wellington. I’ve written about my experiences as the year has progressed.

Throughout it all I have grappled with the job of explaining the strangely intense – sweet, sometimes sad, sometimes overwhelming – experience of learning the language of my ancestors. I think one way to describe it is to say that not once have I ever been disillusioned by the people or the language.

If I have been surprised, it has been by how much better they have been than I expected. And I expected a lot. In our class we have bonded because we shared the most intense experiences. The rush of learning from each other and our wonderful teachers, the pressure of speaking and sometimes failing, always succeeding; the joy of speaking a language that opens the door to a different world. The sense of connection, or reconnection, to that world.

Nobody ever just stands by and leaves others to fail in this kaupapa. We sing every day. We speak every day. We do our bit to help save the language.

I know it is a daunting thought to many people, but you should really consider joining this world too.

These days, more than once I have asked myself – with embarrassment this time – what I did to deserve these people. The truth is I don’t deserve them. But before I got here I did ask those two important questions. What can I do to be different? And just as importantly, how will I make a difference?

What can we do to be different? And just as importantly, how will we make a difference?