Editorial: Clock ticking for Maori language

Fewer children have gone through kohanga reo. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

To anyone whose familiarity with te reo extends to place names and a "kia ora" or two, the Maori language might appear to be in good health.

A Maori Television Service is a vigorous presence on the broadcasting scene; large numbers of Pakeha as well as Maori have undertaken some study of the language and many Maori words have been embraced into the lexicon of New Zealand English.

So the Waitangi Tribunal finding that the language is "approaching a crisis point and that urgent and far-reaching change is required to save it" will come as a shock to many. That is no bad thing since a sense of urgency is a fitting response to a crisis.

The tribunal considered the state of the language as part of the so-called Wai 262 claim, which, among other things, seeks to define cultural knowledge and intellectual property as taonga protected by Article Two of the Treaty.

It's another way of saying that a language is more than just an assemblage of vocabulary and grammar; rather, as one cultural anthropologist puts it, it is one of the "old-growth forests of the mind". The extinction of a language impoverishes human imagination because the ways of thinking and seeing that it embodies are lost with it.

Some argue that Maori, spoken only here, is a "useless" language, unlike Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

This ignores the practical reality of language learning: few people attain more than a smattering of a language from school study but their world-view widens. Worse, such a materialistic analysis ignores the cultural richness that is accrued by the nurture of minority languages.

Maori-speaker numbers are dropping alarmingly as those passing away are not being replaced.

The number of Maori children in kohanga reo has halved since 1993 and those in Maori-medium school education has dropped by 20 per cent in the past decade. The hoofbeats of approaching extinction may not be loud yet but they are plainly audible.

Worldwide, more than 100 languages died in the 20th century. If Maori is not to become one of this century's casualties, action is needed now.

The idea of compulsory teaching and learning does not sit well with the New Zealand temperament but more resources need to be committed to training of teachers and empowering iwi - rather than bureaucracies - to lead a revival. And we need to confront the central question about the preservation of the Maori language: if not here, where?