Maori is a dying language, officials warn (Feature)

By David Barber Oct 21, 2010, 4:40 GMT

Wellington - Twenty-three years after Maori joined English as an official language of New Zealand, it is in danger of dying out, government advisers warned this week.

Older Maoris who are fluent speakers of the language are dying and there is an acute shortage of teachers for the young, the Waitangi Tribunal, which advises the government on historic Maori rights, said in a report.

Representatives of Britain's Queen Victoria guaranteed to protect all Maori taonga, or treasures, including the language, when they signed a treaty with chiefs at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands, in 1840.

Immigrants began pouring into the new British colony, and by 1858, when the first census recorded a Maori population of 56,049, Maori was overtaken by English and became a minority language.

Less than a decade later, a Native Schools Act decreed that English should be the only language used in the education of Maori children - a lasting policy so rigorously enforced that, to this day, older Maoris can recall being strapped for speaking their native tongue at school.

It was not until a Maori cultural renaissance in the early 1980s revived interest in the language that kohanga reo, or language kindergartens, were created to teach infants their traditional tongue before they went to school.

Sadly, the Waitangi Tribunal said, the government did not train enough people to meet a growing demand for Maori language teachers.

As a result, the 14,500 pupils at 809 kohanga reo in 1993 had dropped to 9,300 at 464 establishments last year. The proportion of Maori children being educated in a Maori medium fell from a high of 18.6 per cent in 1999 to 15.2 per cent 10 years later.

At tertiary institutions, the number of students taking Maori-language courses more than halved to 17,000 from 2003 to 2007.

The Maori Language Commission estimated that out of the nation's 650,000 Maoris, about 50,000 are fluent Maori speakers while perhaps another 100,000 understand the language.

Although Maori was declared an official language in 1987, Maori tribal radio stations did not start broadcasting until 1993, and the government did not fund a dedicated Maori television channel until 2004.

Dual language signs and notices are few, and the Waitangi Tribunal said the government must do much more to make the country bilingual if the Maori tongue is to survive.

Minister of Maori Affairs Pita Sharples said that while the government can do more, it is up to Maoris to revitalize the language.

But David Rankin, a Maori academic and a leader of the Ngapuhi tribe, himself a fluent speaker, said it was a lost cause and Maori would not survive as a living language beyond a few more generations.

'Even those few of our children and grandchildren who are learning Maori still converse exclusively in English,' he said. 'That is the future, and we have to face up to it.'

He said Maori would still be used for ceremonial purposes as Latin is in the Catholic Church. 'More people still speak Latin than Maori now, and Latin is a dead language,' he said. 'I believe Maori will share the same fate.'

Rankin said it was wrong to believe that Maori culture would die without the language.

'Did Italian culture die when they lost Latin?' he asked. 'Did Russian culture die when they lost Old Slavonic? Maori culture is stronger than the language.'

He argued that the 100 million New Zealand dollars (75 million US dollars) the government spends annually on efforts to prop up the Maori tongue would be better invested in other areas of Maori development.

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