An invented language
The native people of New Zealand had no written language before the settlers began arriving in the late 18th and early 19th century. It was missionaries who put together the early Maori dictionaries. The first was devised by Anglican cleric William Williams. Today the Maori Language Commission is constantly making up new Te Reo words and the Stuffers’ The Post has a new one each day at the bottom of page one. An offering from last week: Mauiui means sick
One of the most ridiculous new words the Commission made up was moemoea for Surrealism. It featured at the Te Papa exhibition a few years ago and, as expected, the Te Reo descriptions of the exhibits came first.
There are no New Zealanders with more that 50% Maori blood and those who call themselves Maori make up about 17% of the population. The number of people who actually regularly communicate in Te Reo is probably under 5% of the total population.
Nevertheless, in 1987 Te Reo was made one of our three official languages along with English and sign language. Today all government entities have Maori names, and any new organisation, building, road or facility around the towns and cities of New Zealand gets a Te Reo name. Why can’t we have English names used — a ferry called the MV Anderton, the MJ Savage Library, the Jon Trimmer Memorial Theatre?
“Manglish” and other absurdities
Some journalists drop Te Reo words into their English articles – words like mahi, mauri, wahine, tikanga, ao, kaupapa, mana whenua — presumably with a view to educating non-Maori speakers and getting them to use the words. There have been inconsistencies — the Black Ferns have been referred to as wahine toa, but tane toa has not been applied to the All Blacks.
The resulting Manglish is a reminder of the emergence of Franglais many decades ago. It was a mix of French and English designed to help tourists from the United Kingdom communicate with locals across the Channel.
All government departments now have Te Reo names and sometimes the Maori version comes first as with Oranga Tamariki–Ministry for Children. But not the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment–Hikina Whakatutuki. When the government is mentioned, the Te Reo name comes first–Te Kawanatanga o Aotearoa – New Zealand Government.
Presumably, Aotearoa is the Maori name for the country, even though it has no provenance and as the late gistorian Michael King pointed out “… in the pre-European era, Maori had no name for the country as a whole.” They were never a united people and had no concept of a nation. Tribes and sub-tribes were where their loyalties lay.
Many people have remarked that the now defeated Labour government was trying to change the name of the country by stealth. However, if Aotearoa had been the accepted name for the natives in the first half of the nineteenth century and earlier, it would have featured in the 1935 Declaration of Independence and the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. It didn’t, the name Nu Tirani was used.
The 2023 state education History Curriculum is chock full of Te Reo words and many are not translated. As regards lack of translation, I once attended a ceremony at the Marines Memorial in Queen Elizabeth Park near Paekakariki, when a Native American Marine who was over here in 1943, was present. Local iwi leaders spoke in Maori for at least 15 minutes while Saginaw stood leaning on his stick. There was no translation for the visitor who had travelled from the other side of the world.
Twisting our history and changing/adding names
It has been common in recent years for placenames to be changed to a Maori one. We recently passed through Bennydale and it has a new Te Reo name, Maniaiti. The signs, of course, put Maniaiti first. The small settlement of Maxwell west of W’anganui used to be a milestone coming back from Taranaki, but it’s now called Paharaka because local iwi said George Maxwell was a murderer. As Bruce Moon has pointed out, they have it wrong.
The famous Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha killed prisoners sometimes after torturing them, ate human flesh and collected slaves, but there is no move to change the name of Rauparaha St in Waikanae Beach or the Rauparaha arena in Porirua.
Te Reo greetings on radio and television
Radio New Zealand — the New Zealand equivalent of the BBC — is supposed to be free of political meddling. Yet now it has been hijacked, and its hapless staff obliged to dispense their daily dose of te reo. There were just a few words to begin with. Then longer sentences which have kept on growing until the keener young grovellers now begin and end their spiels with expansive swatches of a lingo understood by only a minuscule proportion of their audience. –Dave Witherow, Otago Daily Times, 3 December 2017
Don Brash has also been concerned, and agreed to be interviewed by Kim Hill on her Saturday programme a few years ago.
Brash referred to listening to the RNZ News at 6.00am in the morning and hearing Guyon Espinar giving a few sentences in Te Reo without any translation. Brash made the point that close on 100% of those listening wouldn’t have a clue what the announcer was saying.
Hill had clearly decided in advance that this interview would be about batting for her colleague and discrediting her guest. Her position seemed to be I’m right, he’s wrong and I’m going to prove it.
She was thoroughly rude and broke every rule in the RNZ Lexicon for objective interviewing.
As most readers know, the Te Reo introductions and farewells on the Legacy Media have continued despite the change of government.
Te Reo in its place
New Zealanders generally accept that some words of Maori origin such as whanau (family) and mana (stature) are now part of Kiwi English.
There is no problem if part-Maori and others wish to speak in Te Reo on marae and at other gatherings, but the invented language should not be imposed on the general public in official names, in the introductions on radio and television, and casually dropped into newspaper and magazine articles.
Hopefully the incoming government will end the Te Reo obsession as part of their program to get New Zealand back on track.
Is there a single person in NZ who speaks Maori as a first language?
I remember a time when I supported the Maori receptionists at National Library being allowed to answer the phone with Kia Ora. Those days are gone, and I’m now allergic. The fact National Library ONLY answers the phone with Kia Ora, never Good Morning or Good Afternoon, was a first step in this process.
Yes, whanau was a word used in English, but not that common and usually to denote extended family – “all the whanau” – quite useful. The Jacinda government imposed upon us the universal replacement of the word family with whanau, which has probably killed the word for many.
Ideologues argue that “languages change all the time so we should be able to (consciously) change English”. Yes of course languages change, but it’s not usually by force. And when a language borrows words from another lingo, they are adapted to the sound system of the receiving language. We’re not allowed to do that any more, in fact words, especially place names, that have been to some degree anglicised for 100 years are now expected to be pronounced in the “proper fashion”.
The Jacinda government never wanted to take the public with them in this campaign to revitalise Maori. They preferred to do it by force, by imposition, because that was their mindset in every sphere.
Regarding the first question, there probably are some in the Northland region.
Imagine public servants who had better not put a foot or consonant/vowel group wrong.
I’m sure many people keep lists at the ready in case they forget or confuse words.
By the way, English is not an official language of NZ, more of a lingua franca given the multiple cultures; however, Winston has proposed to make it one:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/08/20/winston-peters-proposes-to-make-english-an-official-language/
I guess we New Zealanders can count ourselves lucky in that we had only six years of the Marxist communist Jabcinda government. The Maorification was just one issue that the tyrant forced onto the citizens. The poor Russians had seventy years of communism before it eventually collapsed.