Stumbling and fumbling like a te reo 2-year-old
Iwas a 2-year-old pondering, in spare moments, whether there was such a thing as noninvasive prostate examinations. A 2-year-old with a gammy knee and muscles that had started complaining behind my back. A 2-year-old who didn’t actually have all the time in the world. A 2-year-old with increasingly energetic lethargy. A 2-year-old who cursed the approaching whisper of middle age with all of its chronic this, and diminishing that.
This – by the way – was at the start of last week. In March I dropped out of my job as a journalist to learn te reo Ma¯ ori. I headed to the fulltime, fullimmersion Heke Reo Ma¯ ori course at Te Wa¯ nanga O Raukawa in the rural town of O¯ taki in the lower North Island. This column is following my progress, and is also a discussion of issues around things Ma¯ ori. That discussion, I’ll admit, can often be a feisty one.
The course has wonderfully generous, knowledgeable teachers, and caring and committed students. It has been a revelatory journey. Terrifying, exhausting, emotional, beautiful, moving, and ultimately fulfilling in ways that I could try for days or weeks to capture in writing but still probably couldn’t. In a nutshell, I think I’m saying – particularly if, like me, you are an adult Ma¯ ori – you should do full immersion te reo Ma¯ ori when, where and however you can. But whatever you do, please do it.
Anyway, learning Ma¯ ori as an adult in a fullimmersion environment has the strange effect of turning time on itself. None of us can be in two places at one time, but I am in two times at one place. I think, maybe, after a couple of months of full immersion, I am a man in my 40s speaking at the approximate level of a 2-year-old. Maybe a bright 18-month-old. Maybe a reluctant 3-year-old.
I’m better at written te reo because, with the additional time afforded by writing, you can craft something approaching complete sentences and paragraphs.
But the cut and thrust of conversation is a lot tougher. You try to understand what the other person has just said, then respond quickly. You end up speaking in fragments; you end up slopping mistakes all over the place like you’re dancing with a cup of hot soup.
I sometimes wonder what it’s like for fluent speakers listening to adults trying to discuss serious issues in the broken-down, language-lite of the 2-year-old. It must be like watching toddlers throw javelins. Funny, maybe, but ultimately confusing.
However, as bad as I must sound, it’s still better than monolingualism, and that is where I started.
So you start the journey, and the important thing is that you are moving forward. I might only be speaking like a 2-year-old now, but any parent will tell you there’s a huge difference between the burblings of a baby and a toddler’s conversation. Nowadays I can ask where the toilet is all on my own.
So at the start of last week, there I was: a conversational 2-year-old about to head off on a new adventure. The noho marae.
Few, if any, academic courses are like the fullimmersion class. You live inside your study. However, even at the wa¯ nanga, you can leave class at the end of the day and slip into your old Pa¯ keha¯ speaking skin at home. In the case of the noho marae, a stay on a marae, you can’t.
Last week, from Monday to Thursday, we went to bed speaking Ma¯ ori, we woke up speaking Ma¯ ori. We filled the hours between speaking te reo in what is the heart of any Ma¯ ori community.
You end up speaking in fragments; you end up slopping mistakes all over the place like you’re dancing with a cup of hot soup.
Iremember dragging myself out of bed before dawn, standing, wobbly and dizzy from sleep, kicking off a waiata in a warbling voice. I remember standing in the same whare tupuna in pitch black in the night and singing poetry and feeling my skin prickle and seeing the dim outline of the people and the walls and the ceiling appearing all around me out of the darkness.
I remember standing just inside the doors of that whare and stealing a glance out at the Tararua range dusted in snow while I tried to clear my head and remember the next words of a speech for the class.
I remember the smell of the smoke from the remnants of the fire for the ha¯ ngı¯. I remember listening as classmates poked gentle fun at each other and kept warm in the dark beside the flames. I remember the smallest things: mopping floors, carrying wood, chopping spring onions. I remember the taste of the food. I remember the faces. The voices.
I’m in my 40s, and so it was nothing that I hadn’t done or seen before, over and over, but nevertheless I don’t remember experiencing anything remotely like it.