Now you’re officially wasting our time
Plans to make English an official language in New Zealand are baseless, misguided and smack of a pointless backlash against te reo Maori’s success.
FINALLY, someone in our Parliament has some common sense.
NZ First MP Clayton Mitchell has lodged a private members bill to make English an official language of New Zealand. He says it’s to ‘‘rectify a longstanding issue.’’
One of the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of the word issue is ‘‘an important topic that people are discussing or arguing about’’.
So to delve further into this outbreak of common sense, I became immediately concerned and wanted to find out more about this ‘‘issue’’ that is so serious it needs rectifying.
Were children at our schools having their mouths washed out with soap for daring to speak it? Are large sections of our community being marginalised or excluded by not having access to their means of communication?
A quick scan on the interweb through the past month of news stories and commentary in New Zealand produced exactly… well… nothing.
Going back further, there was one story from 2015 about Robin Bishop in Tauranga who launched a petition to make English an official language. Bishop’s petition eventually gathered 6258 signatures and she finally presented it to parliament last year.
A further scan through the past century of news in New Zealand revealed... nothing again – not even crickets bored enough to chirp. Although there were some reports about Maori children having their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their language.
Labour MPRuth Dyson was the member in charge of the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006 and said at the time of the Bishop petition that Maori and sign language needed special status because English was the dominant language.
‘‘English is the only language in common use in broadcasting and law, so that’s why sign language and Maori need to go through the law change.’’
Besides, being accorded official status doesn’t seem to do that much for the languages. There still isn’t sign language present on the TV news.
I can’t help but wonder whether this move is some kind of response to all the recent support and discussion around the use of te reo Maori – as though this advocacy for the Maori language will somehow threaten the place of English in this country.
Don’t get me wrong I love the English language: it changed life for me in New Zealand once I learned it as a sixyear-old. And just this week I learnt a new word: vivify, which means to make more lively or interesting.
Clayton Mitchell told media that everyone he’s spoken to, thinks it’s ‘‘absurd’’ English isn’t an official language like te reo Maori or New Zealand Sign Language. I’m sure Mitchell must speak to a lot of people, and maybe one of them did use the word ‘‘absurd’’ to describe this ‘‘issue’’.
But I’m just not sure that’s enough evidence with which to waste parliament’s time – especially not when English is already customarily used in courts, parliament and throughout the public sector and is spoken by 95 per cent of people in New Zealand.
It’s not under threat, and so doesn’t need the legal protection.
But then again, if we’re heading in this direction, maybe we could also have a bill declaring that when it’s not cloudy, the sky’s official colour be recognised as blue.