Where to for te reo after a big week?

It is abundantly clear that Te Wiki o te Reo Ma¯ ori has been a bigger success this year than at any time since it began in 1975. Some growth was inevitable as the use of Ma¯ ori has been increasingly prioritised in media and in schools, but few could have imagined that public engagement would be as great as it has been in 2018.

Ma¯ ori language mastheads on newspapers would have been unimaginable in some of our more conservative cities even a decade ago.

And while there have been some predictable expressions of backlash, overt racism has been less pronounced.

But what happens now? Do

Pa¯ keha¯ New Zealanders go back to a steady diet of English and nothing but English for the other 51 weeks of the year or do they at least make an effort to maintain the new Ma¯ ori words they picked up this week?

Could they keep using ‘‘Kia ora’’, ‘‘Morena’’ and ‘‘Nga¯ mihi’’ in greetings without the urging of a Government agency?

Could they continue to order their morning Mo¯ wai or Pango Roa without a prompt sheet? Or do they go back to asking for a flat white or long black?

One of the rare public criticisms of Te Wiki o te Reo Ma¯ ori in 2018 came from a cartoonist who expressed a view that teaching Ma¯ ori in schools will somehow diminish English language skills.

A more generous reading is that we should not make Ma¯ ori a priority until students are perfect at English.

Both these views are based on false premises. There is abundant research demonstrating that learning a second language has broader cognitive benefits.

Indeed, National MP Nikki Kaye said exactly that in a press release this month.

‘‘Speaking more than one language has enormous cognitive, cultural, social and economic benefits,’’ Kaye said, before going on to say that ‘‘New Zealand is a diverse country where 160 languages are spoken, and it’s important that what’s being taught in schools reflects that’’.

Her press release celebrated the drawing of her bill ensuring every child at primary and intermediate level has the opportunity to learn a second language from the ballot in Parliament.

Hopefully its passage will expand the conversation.

The bill does not urge New Zealand schools to make Ma¯ ori compulsory.

Kaye’s expectation is that Ma¯ ori and New Zealand Sign Language, official languages of New Zealand, wouldbeonafinallistof10or more priority languages schools could choose from. Others might include Mandarin, French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Hindi.

National sees a business benefit, in that second language speakers could connect to overseas markets. But Kaye also hopes her bill would ‘‘see a lot more young New Zealanders speaking te reo’’. This is arguably a much easier sell than the Green Party position to make Ma¯ ori compulsory in schools by 2025, an advance on its previous position of compulsory Ma¯ ori by 2030. While some in Labour support compulsion, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has avoided the word but hopes we have 1 million te reo speakers by 2040.

What is not in doubt is that we will hear more Ma¯ ori spoken in future, in schools, the media, even in cafes. The naysayers will become even more isolated.