Face Up to Reality

A Little Used Language on Life-Support

We hope that commentator, Mike Hoskings has a security detail.  He has dared to question publicly the official attempts to preserve the Maori language.  For thirty years or so, Te Reo Maori has been made a cause célèbre amongst some Maori and heaps of politically correct bureaucrats.  But it remains an endangered language.  People just don't want to use the language, let alone learn it. 

Some  radicals have pushed to make Te Reo a compulsory subject in government schools.

Here is Hosking's piece--which, as you read it you would do well to bear in mind that he has possibly, if not probably, committed career suicide.

Its a language in trouble a story.  It's been in trouble pretty much as long as I can remember, which would be most of my life, which is about 50 years.  In other words Maori has been spoken by a tiny and diminishing number of people - and for some, not many, that is a worry.  Hence the call to do something about it.

It's on life support, as one academic put it on Friday, and he is right. There is no doubt it's a language in trouble. . . . It is not a government's job to go round saving languages.  Why not? Because you have to ask yourself why it's in trouble. And the answer is simple: People don't want to bother with it.  It's not like they don't have the choice. It's not like they haven't had the choice forever.

Maori - like all languages - can be freely learned in a variety of ways. We just don't want to - and that's our right.  Part of it is of course because -and this is un-PC as well - it's of little use outside New Zealand.  In fact, given it's spoken by so few, it's actually not a lot of use inside NZ. But a language historically lives or expands or remains popular because it exists or spreads internationally and/or it's useful in business. Maori doesn't and has never fitted that particular criteria.

So... what to do? Well if the Government were of a mind (and thank God it's not) it could make every kid learn it. That's the only way to get more people learning it, given all the pleading has gone on for years for exactly no change whatsoever.  Compulsion. And compulsion is rarely a good reason to do anything.   And if you forced kids to learn it they would learn at the expense of what? Maths? history?  Something would have to give if education is about arming young people with tools for the future - a language that is barely spoken here and not spoken at all internationally is hardly meeting that criteria is it?

The other answer - which has always been the answer - lies with us all personally.  We can all learn it. We can all speak it, but we don't - so expecting the government to do what we can't be bothered doing ourselves tells you all you need to know about the way we really feel about it.  And why it's in the shape it is.

The parlous condition of Te Reo Maori is not a unique tragedy.  In fact, thousands of languages have become extinct.  Have you met anyone speaking Chaldean recently?  Or Nubian?  The Guardian has kindly reproduced a list of languages presently designated as being at risk around the world.  If you have the time, you can scroll through the piece.

Maori is listed as having 70,000 speakers and is classified as vulnerable.  There is a long list of languages which have less than 100 speakers and are classified as critically endangered.  Some languages have only two speakers left.

The point is obvious: languages can and do die.  Hundreds upon hundreds, if not thousands, have already become extinct.  It is no big deal.  They die out because no-one uses them any more.  If a government programme is needed to get people to use a language, it is effectively on life-support.  The language has been self-selected for extinction.  It's no big deal.  It has happened throughout human history.  It will keep happening.

Te Reo devotees need to face up to this reality.