KEY POINTS:
The country is in the middle of celebrations for Tau Hou Maori Matariki, or Maori New Year. For the first time in my life I noted this celebration. Why? For the past four months, in the privacy of my own dining room in the sole company of my
tape-recorder, I have been learning Maori.
When I've given this information to people who have a neat, preconceived opinion of me - which goes something like, ex-Act MP, far right, racist, eats babies for breakfast - the reaction is quite startling. They want to know why.
I don't have a satisfactory answer for them. My parents learned Maori. My children learned at school, why should I miss out? The seed was sown some years ago when I was on the Epsom Girls' Grammar School Board of Trustees and my daughter was ashamed when I couldn't sing the national anthem in Maori. Around the same time, my children would fall about laughing whenever I spoke a Maori name because my pronunciation was so appalling.
I countered that at least I pronounce English reasonably correctly, unlike many young television reporters who talk about "human beens", or patients being "ear-lifted to hospital", something which must drastically worsen their condition. I watch television news and realise I now live in "Wullington", and a poor woman died after Mercury Energy's contractor cut off "Alec Tricity" - whoever he is.
But what's English anyway? When I spent three months at Cambridge University in 2003, I made friends with other fellows from Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, Southampton, Essex, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. At mealtimes, though we all spoke in English, none of us could easily understand another's conversation.
But my Maori was risible and I felt like a challenge, so when I was in Martinborough and my daughter covered her ears and shrieked when I pointed out "Tee Kye-rangga" vineyard, I knew it was time to improve.
As someone who uses words for a living, it seemed like a good challenge, even though there's no prospect I'll ever be commissioned to write a feature in Maori. But we're told to keep the brain active as the years advance, so I enrolled at Massey University as an extramural student, doing one paper - Te Kakano o te Reo, or Maori for beginners. I don't have a tertiary qualification so if I live long enough I might well graduate from Massey University with a degree in Maori Studies.
But, by hokey, it's been a struggle. Those who blithely state Maori is easy because there are no plurals, and no conjugations, don't know their korero from their kata. Adding an "s" to signify plural would be a lot easier than remembering the macrons (which I haven't mastered on the computer, hence none in this column), and distinguishing te from nga. The grammatical construction of sentences is totally alien to me. If I hadn't paid nearly $500 to do this, I probably would have given up in the first month. (I could have got a student loan, but I can afford this, so that option seemed immoral.)
And this week I got my first assignment back with not a bad result - 13 out of 20. To my shame, I left out a whole question worth five marks. That this question was my mihi - who I am, where I come from, my family, my tribal affiliations (Ngati Pakeha) - shows I have much to learn about protocol.
But at least now when I phone some Government institution to be greeted with the ubiquitous "Kia Ora", I can answer with more than three sentences in Maori. That's more fun than blogger baiting.
This week I'm heading offshore for a month, briefly escaping this funny little country where the Reserve Bank thinks it's a good thing to weaken the national currency which it has earlier made strong by raising the cash rate. I'm first going to Chicago to see Richard Posner, judge and brilliant legal theorist who wrote a fantastic book called Sex and Reason. Then to Scotland where I won't understand a word they say, I'm told. I'll take my te reo lessons, and bully my long-suffering husband into testing my vocabulary. I'll hand over my uruwhenua at immigration, smug in the knowledge that I'm learning my country's other official language, that of the tangata whenua.
I'm not in danger of becoming a born-again Maori, changing my name to Deborah Kairipoata Coddington, stooped from the weight of a 12-inch pounamu pendant swinging from my neck, eager to hongi with all I meet. I doubt I'll ever be confident enough to converse, but I'm enjoying myself in the interim. As my tutor wrote to all her students, "This is not an easy journey we undertake, no reira kia kaha, kia maia, kia u ki te reo Maori".
