Te reo Māori is who we are

While it might not seem like it this week, te reo Ma¯ ori is in trouble. You have look past the superficial indicators like TV weather presenters pronouncing place names with a flourish and the politicians who begin their speeches with their pepeha.

Because, though these sound like progress, such tips of the hat to a language are not what keep that language alive.

For a language to thrive it needs speakers. It needs a critical mass of people who use the language as part of their daily lives.

That isn’t happening with te reo Ma¯ ori. If it was, you wouldn’t do a double take when you heard the language being used in the supermarket. That’s if you hear it at all.

Census data from 2001 to 2013 shows

Ma¯ ori speakers of te reo Ma¯ ori are in proportionate decline. Of the 148,400 people, or 3.7 per cent of the total population, who could hold a conversation in Ma¯ ori in 2013, 84.5 per cent identified as Ma¯ ori.

In the 2013 census, 21.3 per cent of all Ma¯ ori reported they could use te reo to talk about everyday things, down from 23.7 per cent in 2006 and 25.2 per cent in 2001.

It is reasonable to hope that figures from the

2018 census will show that decline has halted and started to go the other way. But even if it has, the battle to keep the language alive is far from won.

The Government’s Maihi Karauna proposed strategy to revitalise the language is a step in the right direction. It sets out three goals to achieve by

2040: that the country values the language as part of its national identity; that one million Kiwis are able to speak basic te reo Ma¯ ori; and that 150,000 Ma¯ ori use it as their primary language.

The first goal is the most important. Making teaching of the language compulsory in schools would get us to the million mark in a matter of years and 125,000 Ma¯ ori are already able to converse in te reo, so the work needed to get that to 150,000 and have them use it is not onerous.

Yet neither of those things can happen if we don’t genuinely believe te reo Ma¯ ori is a key element of our national identity and take pride in how it can enrich our lives as both individuals and a united people.

You may not even realise, but te reo Ma¯ ori has already done that in many ways.

The concept of mana is often translated to respect but it is far deeper and more nuanced than that. Wha¯ nau is not just family, it is all of us together in love, and taonga is more than silver and gold, it is the visible and invisible riches that make a people everything they are.

These are distinctly Kiwi concepts that we have because of te reo Ma¯ ori, and it would be hard to argue we were better off without them.

There is still strong resistance to learning te reo Ma¯ ori as a second language, one of the frequent arguments being that its usefulness plummets to zero outside New Zealand.

And that is true. But the same could also be said, for example, of the Swedish, Japanese or Thai languages, and there is no suggestion these should stop being used.

Because if they did, what would it mean to be Swedish, Japanese or Thai? The same question could be asked of New Zealanders if we let te reo Ma¯ ori slip away.

Mana, taonga and whānau are distinctly Kiwi concepts that we have because of te reo Māori and it would be hard to argue we were better off without them.