It has been interesting to read the letters about the Māori language and Lara Meyer’s responses. Lara hopes that te reo Māori will become the most spoken language in Aotearoa in her lifetime.
I do not know Lara’s age but I am 77 years old and therefore doubt I will see these things in my lifetime.
I have been described as a Boomer, “male, stale and pale” and probably everything else invented for the elderly.
I was born in Napier and spent a lot of my childhood at my grandparents’ in Hastings. Although he was born in Scotland, my grandfather was able to speak some te reo due to having lived for a few years in rural Gisborne, where it was common to speak Māori — as it was in Hastings in the ’50s. When I took him out to a bar for a beer in his last years in the 1970s, he had fewer men to speak to in Māori.
According to government statistics I can find on the internet, 33 percent of Māori born at about the same time as me can speak te reo Māori. This seems right, as te reo was frequently spoken by my friends at school and in their homes.
My daughter was born in 1973 and only 23 percent of Māori born about the same time would become te reo speakers.
Her daughter was born in 2015 and only 15 percent of Māori born about the same time are te reo speakers.
In 1973 I worked in a printing factory where half the workers were Māori and it was not unusual to hear a conversation in te reo at the next table at lunchtime. Twenty years later in 1993 I worked at a printing factory with the same proportion of Māori and non-Māori workers; two or three of the Māori spoke te reo. One day I overheard one of them trying to promote the language, and the others having no interest.
I very much doubt that the changes Lara Meyer predicts will ever happen. Two surveys in recent years have shown that about 10 percent of New Zealanders want the country’s name changed to Aotearoa and with the falling proportion of Māori in younger age groups speaking te reo, I think English will remain the most spoken language.
Tony Dobson
