Taieri MP Ingrid Leary pictured during an event by the Rotuman community.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary pictured during an event by the Rotuman community.
Opinion:
Words build love and connection, solve problems - and also start wars.
That’s why language is so profoundly important to me. It led to my two language-centric professions in journalism and law - and the excitement I feel for my teenage daughter Lily’s language journey learning Rotuman.
To truly know her culture - her beautiful, ancient and indigenous Rotuman culture – Lily has chosen to know her language.
As a child of the 1960s growing up in a multi-lingual house in New Zealand, I developed an appreciation of language from my Dutch mother from the get-go.
However, it was an exploration of te reo and tikanga Māori at Owairoa Primary School, in Howick, that helped me see that time can be circular - not just linear - and the beautiful mystery of forces far more powerful than us.
Living and working both in television and as a university lecturer in Fiji for five years deepened my appreciation that language shapes our reality - and is more than a tool to reflect an objective reality – regardless of the doctrines of Western thinking.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary with members of Labour's Pacific caucus, Speaker of the House Adrian Rurawhe and members of the Rotuman community.
I also got to travel to Rotuma – a magical Polynesian Island two hours flight from Viti Levu, in Fiji, with around 2000 inhabitants.
Their Austronesian language uses metathesis to invert the ultimate vowel in a word with the immediately preceding consonant - resulting in a vowel system characterised by umlaut, vowel shortening or extending and diphthongisation. That’s quite an earful sometimes, and a lot to master, for any second-language learner.
There are around only 10,000 Rotuman speakers in Fiji and around 1000 speakers in Aotearoa - making it a UNESCO endangered language.
My brief childhood foray into Te Ao Māori shaped my thinking when I became mother to two Rotuman children mixed with my own Dutch heritage.
They look more Polynesian than Pākehā and I knew they’d experience the world very differently to me.
Back in New Zealand, my children’s extended family generously gave their time to try to teach Rotuman to my children in and around the hurley burley of life. They sang nursery rhymes, recited prayers and learned some complicated vowels.
Most importantly, my children learned that the aunties who took time out to teach them really valued the language - and that one day they would be instruments of its succession.
The make-shift lessons without formal structure and resourcing eventually proved unsustainable. In the absence of Rotuman lessons at school, my children went through bilingual Māori/English education and kapa haka - an important and enriching experience.
Lily Rose Atu, 19, with her mum, Taieri MP Ingrid Leary.
Roll forward 15 years, my daughter Lily reconnected with her Rotuman community through various family weekends initiated by the New Zealand Rotuman Fellowship; founded and led by my dear friend and community leader, Maria Fuata.
Hearing others her age converse in Rotuman at these events ignited something in Lily and she signed up for new online lessons being offered through the Ministry for Pacific Peoples.
That three-year language journey of Lily’s has evolved into an enduring quest to understand her language and culture at much deeper levels including Rotuman dance and music - and brought her incredible joy.
