When he encountered a young Māori woman who was about to vote for the first time, his trademark gushiness was unleashed:
“Mere is nineteen. She speaks fluent te reo Māori and English. She’s one of those young people whose sense of self sparkles. Her bilingualism must be such an affront to those of us so insecure we paint out the word ‘rāpihi’ on a rubbish bin. That strange, mean, brittle fear, that makes being enriched feel like being diminished.”
Who knew that the Māori word for “rubbish” appearing on a bin was “enriching”? Or that speaking a language other than English could invest a young person with such virtue? And who is going to be cruel enough to break the news to the hyperventilating Campbell that Mere is just one of more than a million New Zealanders who can understand a language other than English?
Is each of them equally praiseworthy on account of their bilingualism (or perhaps tri-lingualism or more)? And do they “enrich” us just as much by their linguistic prowess as Campbell seems to think Mere does?
According to the 2018 Census, New Zealand had 4,482,135 speakers of English, with te reo Maori a far-distant second at 185,955.
Among the top 25 languages spoken in New Zealand, there were also 101,937 Samoan speakers, 95,253 who spoke Northern Chinese (Mandarin), with 69,471 speaking Hindi. Some 55,116 spoke French, 43,278 Tagalog, 41,385 German, and 23,343 Dutch.
The list includes 22,986 who can communicate in New Zealand Sign Language.
But it is te reo Māori alone which excites admiration and excitement among the chattering classes that often lurches towards liturgical levels of reverence and praise.
As AUT’s Professor Paul Moon put it in his 2018 book Killing Te Reo Māori: An Indigenous Language Facing Extinction:
“References to the language itself are reverential and devotional, with an emphasis on the unquestioned sanctity of te reo Māori; there is the well-worn narrative of a long struggle over obstacles to ensure te reo Māori’s survival; and at the end, by adhering to whatever incarnation of the tenets of revitalisation are being preached, there is the promise of redemption.”
Yet, while te reo speakers are lionised, the truth is that it is immigrants who can speak only limited English when they arrive here who are our true language heroes.
From a viewpoint of communication, learning te reo is a luxury for nearly everyone who tries to master it. Apart from formal occasions on marae and other ritualised settings, anyone who can’t speak or understand te reo is rarely disadvantaged. English is the mother tongue of practically every New Zealander who is born here — including Māori. The vast bulk of our population speaks English either as a native speaker or as a second language, albeit with various degrees of proficiency.
However, when immigrants arrive without a good working knowledge of English (which is often the case for partners and children of the principal applicant), they are at a real disadvantage until they master it. They will typically struggle to communicate successfully in English in everyday scenarios such as shopping, banking and taking public transport. They also won’t understand what vital information English-speaking doctors, real estate agents and lawyers are telling them.
And that disadvantage often continues. I have an Iranian friend whose first language is Farsi. She speaks English well but after many years here she still sometimes needs help deciphering official documents and medical advice — if only to check she has understood exactly what is meant. She and other immigrants are the truly admirable linguists in our multicultural society — they have to master English as quickly as possible to survive in a country in which English is the only lingua franca. They have little choice.
We also rarely hear extravagant praise for a Chinese immigrant, say, for being fluent in both Mandarin and English — let alone casting their bilingual ability as a reproach to those who aren’t as linguistically capable.
On TVNZ’s Q&A on Sunday when Campbell interviewed Dr Carlos Cheung — National’s young science graduate and property entrepreneur who looks to have defeated Labour’s Michael Wood in Auckland’s working-class suburb of Mt Roskill — he made no mention of Cheung’s linguistic prowess. Yet, under “languages”, Cheung’s LinkedIn profile states: “Cantonese, Chinese, English”.
Why is this linguistic virtuosity not praised as remarkable when those able to speak and understand even a little te reo — or who are in the process of learning it — are so often not only lionised but sanctified by the media?
And why are those who are not interested in learning te reo or critical of its random use in news reports and official information (no matter how many other languages they might speak themselves) so often demonised?
A principal reason is that the normal incentives to learn another language are mostly not in play with te reo Māori and it has to be fetishised to obscure that fact.
Languages are primarily tools for efficient communication and the main reason most people will learn a new one is for its utility. It may be that another language is necessary for dealing with businesses in an export market; or it is needed to set up a new life or study in another country; or simply to make travel easier and more rewarding through contact with locals. More rarely, the desire stems from curiosity or a romantic interest piqued by a different culture and its history.
Very few people, however, voluntarily commit themselves to the arduous task of learning another language from a sense of duty to rescue it from oblivion or from a sense of patriotism in the hope of helping form a distinctive national identity. Some will, of course, but the vast majority won’t.
The government, media, schools and universities are doing their very best to create an artificial demand for te reo but unless the demand is organic, a language on “life-support” (as Professor Moon describes te reo) will always struggle to truly prosper.
Consequently, language revivalists, and the media which backs them, cast learning te reo as a sacred “journey” that only deplorables and racists would reject taking part in. Thus, society is divided into the virtuous and the barbarians (a word, incidentally, that comes to us via Ancient Greece as a kind of onomatopoeia. It imitates the babbling sounds — “Ba-ba-ba” — that the Greeks heard when foreigners spoke in their own languages).
Last week in the NZ Herald, political commentator Matthew Hooton didn't so much demonise as patronise those he sees as hostile to the proliferation of te reo in unexpected places:
“A minority of Pākehā, usually conservative and elderly, struggle with the speed with which te reo Māori is being adopted by the media and government agencies. They object to weather presenters saying ‘Ōtepoti’, rather than ‘Dunedin’ and government departments being called ‘Waka Kotahi – NZ Transport Agency’ rather than ‘NZ Transport Agency – Waka Kotahi’. A cuppa will help.”
However, when a poll conducted for The Post in mid-September asked whether “Government departments should be known by their English name, not their Māori name”, 49 per cent agreed, with only 26 per cent opposed. (25 per cent were unsure.)
If those numbers are representative, it’s clear that objections are not confined to a minority of grumpy, older Pakeha as many journalists like to pretend. As one reader commented: “[Hooton’s claim] is not correct. I have had discussions with immigrants from India and East Asia who are by no means old and who constitute a population that now makes up a considerable number of our overall population. They also object. No one asked them if New Zealand should be called Aotearoa, and don’t ask them what Te Whatu Ora means or how to pronounce it, because they don’t know. As far as they are concerned, they immigrated to an English-speaking country, not a Māori-speaking one.”
A senior lecturer in Classics, Dr James Kierstead — a graduate of Oxford, Stanford and the University of London — noted in an essay published in April that even a “language nerd” like him had found the use of Māori terms inserted into English text “confusing” when he arrived to teach at Victoria University.
“Committees had names like Te Maruako Aronui. The university’s ‘Strategic Plan’ trumpeted values like whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga (engagement and equity, if you’re interested). Higher-ups had alternative titles like Tumu Whakarae (Vice-Chancellor) and Iho Tūroa (Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Sustainability).”
He added: “Recent immigrants understandably seemed to find them particularly bewildering. A Mexican friend in a new job told me she’d received an email ending with ‘Ngā mihi’ and had insouciantly replied ‘Dear Ngā…’”
How much is being achieved by scattergun attempts to revitalise te reo is uncertain. Such programmes have been under way for decades in New Zealand, but the numbers of those capable of speaking more te reo than a few words and phrases remain a tiny proportion of the population. And that appears to be true of Māori themselves.
Te Manahau Morrison, an associate professor of te reo at Massey University — better known as Scotty Morrison, the presenter of TVNZ’s Te Karere — said last year that only 2.6 to 2.7 per cent of Māori speakers use the language on a daily basis at home. The key to a successful language revitalisation programme, he told The Listener, is getting it to be spoken in the home — and particularly in Māori homes.
Many critics believe that the responsibility of preserving te reo lies primarily with Māori. And if Māori don’t speak the language at home and pass it on to their children, the government adding words in te reo to road signs and Beehive press releases — and the media slipping it into news broadcasts — will never enable it to flourish as a living language.
Pakeha in wealthy city suburbs enrolling in night classes won’t prevent its decline either. In fact, by soaking up the limited pool of te reo teachers, they are likely hampering tuition going to where it would be most needed to invigorate the language — Māori students who will speak it at home.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
Is each of them equally praiseworthy on account of their bilingualism (or perhaps tri-lingualism or more)? And do they “enrich” us just as much by their linguistic prowess as Campbell seems to think Mere does?
According to the 2018 Census, New Zealand had 4,482,135 speakers of English, with te reo Maori a far-distant second at 185,955.
Among the top 25 languages spoken in New Zealand, there were also 101,937 Samoan speakers, 95,253 who spoke Northern Chinese (Mandarin), with 69,471 speaking Hindi. Some 55,116 spoke French, 43,278 Tagalog, 41,385 German, and 23,343 Dutch.
The list includes 22,986 who can communicate in New Zealand Sign Language.
But it is te reo Māori alone which excites admiration and excitement among the chattering classes that often lurches towards liturgical levels of reverence and praise.
As AUT’s Professor Paul Moon put it in his 2018 book Killing Te Reo Māori: An Indigenous Language Facing Extinction:
“References to the language itself are reverential and devotional, with an emphasis on the unquestioned sanctity of te reo Māori; there is the well-worn narrative of a long struggle over obstacles to ensure te reo Māori’s survival; and at the end, by adhering to whatever incarnation of the tenets of revitalisation are being preached, there is the promise of redemption.”
Yet, while te reo speakers are lionised, the truth is that it is immigrants who can speak only limited English when they arrive here who are our true language heroes.
From a viewpoint of communication, learning te reo is a luxury for nearly everyone who tries to master it. Apart from formal occasions on marae and other ritualised settings, anyone who can’t speak or understand te reo is rarely disadvantaged. English is the mother tongue of practically every New Zealander who is born here — including Māori. The vast bulk of our population speaks English either as a native speaker or as a second language, albeit with various degrees of proficiency.
However, when immigrants arrive without a good working knowledge of English (which is often the case for partners and children of the principal applicant), they are at a real disadvantage until they master it. They will typically struggle to communicate successfully in English in everyday scenarios such as shopping, banking and taking public transport. They also won’t understand what vital information English-speaking doctors, real estate agents and lawyers are telling them.
And that disadvantage often continues. I have an Iranian friend whose first language is Farsi. She speaks English well but after many years here she still sometimes needs help deciphering official documents and medical advice — if only to check she has understood exactly what is meant. She and other immigrants are the truly admirable linguists in our multicultural society — they have to master English as quickly as possible to survive in a country in which English is the only lingua franca. They have little choice.
We also rarely hear extravagant praise for a Chinese immigrant, say, for being fluent in both Mandarin and English — let alone casting their bilingual ability as a reproach to those who aren’t as linguistically capable.
On TVNZ’s Q&A on Sunday when Campbell interviewed Dr Carlos Cheung — National’s young science graduate and property entrepreneur who looks to have defeated Labour’s Michael Wood in Auckland’s working-class suburb of Mt Roskill — he made no mention of Cheung’s linguistic prowess. Yet, under “languages”, Cheung’s LinkedIn profile states: “Cantonese, Chinese, English”.
Why is this linguistic virtuosity not praised as remarkable when those able to speak and understand even a little te reo — or who are in the process of learning it — are so often not only lionised but sanctified by the media?
And why are those who are not interested in learning te reo or critical of its random use in news reports and official information (no matter how many other languages they might speak themselves) so often demonised?
A principal reason is that the normal incentives to learn another language are mostly not in play with te reo Māori and it has to be fetishised to obscure that fact.
Languages are primarily tools for efficient communication and the main reason most people will learn a new one is for its utility. It may be that another language is necessary for dealing with businesses in an export market; or it is needed to set up a new life or study in another country; or simply to make travel easier and more rewarding through contact with locals. More rarely, the desire stems from curiosity or a romantic interest piqued by a different culture and its history.
Very few people, however, voluntarily commit themselves to the arduous task of learning another language from a sense of duty to rescue it from oblivion or from a sense of patriotism in the hope of helping form a distinctive national identity. Some will, of course, but the vast majority won’t.
The government, media, schools and universities are doing their very best to create an artificial demand for te reo but unless the demand is organic, a language on “life-support” (as Professor Moon describes te reo) will always struggle to truly prosper.
Consequently, language revivalists, and the media which backs them, cast learning te reo as a sacred “journey” that only deplorables and racists would reject taking part in. Thus, society is divided into the virtuous and the barbarians (a word, incidentally, that comes to us via Ancient Greece as a kind of onomatopoeia. It imitates the babbling sounds — “Ba-ba-ba” — that the Greeks heard when foreigners spoke in their own languages).
Last week in the NZ Herald, political commentator Matthew Hooton didn't so much demonise as patronise those he sees as hostile to the proliferation of te reo in unexpected places:
“A minority of Pākehā, usually conservative and elderly, struggle with the speed with which te reo Māori is being adopted by the media and government agencies. They object to weather presenters saying ‘Ōtepoti’, rather than ‘Dunedin’ and government departments being called ‘Waka Kotahi – NZ Transport Agency’ rather than ‘NZ Transport Agency – Waka Kotahi’. A cuppa will help.”
However, when a poll conducted for The Post in mid-September asked whether “Government departments should be known by their English name, not their Māori name”, 49 per cent agreed, with only 26 per cent opposed. (25 per cent were unsure.)
If those numbers are representative, it’s clear that objections are not confined to a minority of grumpy, older Pakeha as many journalists like to pretend. As one reader commented: “[Hooton’s claim] is not correct. I have had discussions with immigrants from India and East Asia who are by no means old and who constitute a population that now makes up a considerable number of our overall population. They also object. No one asked them if New Zealand should be called Aotearoa, and don’t ask them what Te Whatu Ora means or how to pronounce it, because they don’t know. As far as they are concerned, they immigrated to an English-speaking country, not a Māori-speaking one.”
A senior lecturer in Classics, Dr James Kierstead — a graduate of Oxford, Stanford and the University of London — noted in an essay published in April that even a “language nerd” like him had found the use of Māori terms inserted into English text “confusing” when he arrived to teach at Victoria University.
“Committees had names like Te Maruako Aronui. The university’s ‘Strategic Plan’ trumpeted values like whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga (engagement and equity, if you’re interested). Higher-ups had alternative titles like Tumu Whakarae (Vice-Chancellor) and Iho Tūroa (Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Sustainability).”
He added: “Recent immigrants understandably seemed to find them particularly bewildering. A Mexican friend in a new job told me she’d received an email ending with ‘Ngā mihi’ and had insouciantly replied ‘Dear Ngā…’”
How much is being achieved by scattergun attempts to revitalise te reo is uncertain. Such programmes have been under way for decades in New Zealand, but the numbers of those capable of speaking more te reo than a few words and phrases remain a tiny proportion of the population. And that appears to be true of Māori themselves.
Te Manahau Morrison, an associate professor of te reo at Massey University — better known as Scotty Morrison, the presenter of TVNZ’s Te Karere — said last year that only 2.6 to 2.7 per cent of Māori speakers use the language on a daily basis at home. The key to a successful language revitalisation programme, he told The Listener, is getting it to be spoken in the home — and particularly in Māori homes.
Many critics believe that the responsibility of preserving te reo lies primarily with Māori. And if Māori don’t speak the language at home and pass it on to their children, the government adding words in te reo to road signs and Beehive press releases — and the media slipping it into news broadcasts — will never enable it to flourish as a living language.
Pakeha in wealthy city suburbs enrolling in night classes won’t prevent its decline either. In fact, by soaking up the limited pool of te reo teachers, they are likely hampering tuition going to where it would be most needed to invigorate the language — Māori students who will speak it at home.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
20 comments:
Te Reo is not preservation of Maori. It is simply a concoction of made up words. It has not continued to develop organically.
Campbell's so woke I'm surprised he didn't interview the rubbish bin -
"this is Rapihi, he/she/it speaks fluent te reo Māori and English and is one of those young bins whose sense of self sparkled, until..."
- then sympathise with the hurt and dismay it was subjected to.
The interview would be very one-sided...so exactly like all JC's efforts. War & Peace is concise compared to his questions.
Correct. I work in an office full of educated indians who have lived in nz for 20 years and moved here because it was a western developed english speaking country. They speak fluent hindi, but don't expect others to. The best bit about them is that they love nz and one of them absolutely adores billy t james. This is how culture evolves, not by forcing a language that even maori don't want to speak down people's throats.
I am happy to follow the direction of Peeni Herare. He is adamant that te reo is a Maori treasure and should only be used by true Maori. Never should it pass the lips of any colonialists, something I am content to help him achieve his aim.
Modern maori is not preservation of the language but the creation of a new contrived hobby one. Capt Cook could easily follow a modern conversation but an ancinet maori would be totally stumped.
How many decades and how much money does it take to get a group of people who consider it a toanga to learn and use it?
Moon is right. It is on life support in ICU and the ICU is staffed by academics, politicians and activists.
Sadly the much, much wider Whanau are no where to be found and too apathetic to attend to it and without them to help it is doomed.
A simple perspective in this overcrowded debate is this:-
I am not blind, deaf, Chinese or Maori.
Therefore I have no use for braille, Maori, sign language or Mandarin.
An excellent summary of where we are at in this Country Graham.
You might be interested to know that l experienced John Campbell’s fawning tour de force up front and personal when he came up my road immediately after Cyclone’s Hale and Gabrielle to film the destruction left in the path of these massive climate events.
Soon after spotting him on TV News reporting from a bridge, not 500 meters from our front gate, l made repeated attempts to contact him, offering some opinions from someone who had seen it all before over a 43 year period.
To say that he deliberately tried to avoid taking up my invitation is probably the understatement of the year.
I did run in to him a month later at the Parata Inquiry into land use hearing at Tolaga Bay where l reissued the invitation.
After promising to come and listen to what l had to say, and in receipt of a few emails to his TV office asking when it was going to happen , that is the last we have seen of him - apart from watching his nauseating performance on Election night.
Meanwhile back to your piece.
I have written numerous times myself on why l believe Te Reo should be compulsorily taught in Primary Schools.
Like you say, it has nothing to do with any guilt l might have due to being part of many generations that didn’t have the chance at that impressionable time in our lives.
No, for me as a long time resident of a community which is 80% dominated by Maori, l see Te Reo as the important link in the nation’s effort to ensure multi understanding of the indigenous culture.
I believe that few of these radical activists who (aided and abetted by multi media journalists who grovel at their feet) want to demonise pakeha for their ignorance would gain any traction if Te Reo really was the second language of the bulk of the population.
Such an achievement would result in ordinary Maori feeling completely free to express themselves to an audience of fellow country men who would be overwhelmingly sympathetic to their concerns. A win / win.
Does John Campbell et al , honestly expect the NZ population every weekend to study the new "Maori " "words" that have been created and defined by persons unknown each week ?
Simply more indoctrination by these earnest left wookies.
They do NOT have the best interests of NZ in mind.
Leave it at the original 700 words in the original Maori lexicon.
A hobby being forced on the whole population.
At least some 'Maori' words are provably concoctions, and thus devoid of any validity. For example, the Level 2 NCEA exam papers in biology have a 'Maori' version in addition to the English one.
How are technical questions on cell biology handled?
No problem.
'Cytoplasm' (the part of a cell outside the nucleus) is maorified into 'waitepe' and 'aerobic respiration occurs in the mitochondria' becomes , 'pā mai ai te tukupūngao ā-hāora i roto i te punaraungao'.
I could go on with endless examples, but you get the point.
With respect to all, I have a European ethnic background and I object to being called a "pakeha" by anybody. That is a Maori word, one of whose meanings is "pig". Its demeaning, like calling an Irishman a "paddy". I know that pakeha is common usage in NZ for identifying a person of European ethnicity, but I for one refuse to use it and I refuse to acknowledge anyone who applies that term to me.
@Anna Mouse you ask how much? I'm sure in one of these recent posts someone stated a figure of $38billion from the get go. Whether it's accurate or not, one can reasonably assume it's been an awful lot, with very significant injections in recent years, especially on the manufacture of new words front. Graham, and the above commentators, have hit the nail squarely. Here's hoping some commonsense will prevail and English will resume it's rightful place without the incessant bastardisation.
The teaching of Maori language (most of it actually made up) to school children (85% non-Maori) achieves nothing for our nation.
A far better project would be to introduce fully funded elocution/English speaking lessons to all Maori identified pupils.
This would hopefully counteract the gangsta/hey bro style of talking that is bringing 15% of our people down.
I see what you did there Anna Mouse.
You did the very thing Adams was about, chucking in the odd Maori word, in this case "whanau". If I were an English speaking visitor to our country,I would have no idea what you were talking about, but if you said "family" I'd get it in one.
I read the Auckland Council meeting agenda for todays meeting. It is a very lengthy document. Each category to be discussed is headed first in Maori then in English.
"Ngā whakaaweawe ā-rohe me ngā tirohanga a te poari ā-rohe"
Translation "Local impacts and local board views"
More to come no doubt.
Te Reo, as it stands, is fine for those who wish to learn it and use it. I feel the same way with sign language, except of course that those who rely on sign language usually have no other recourse. In saying that, I have found that a number of Te Reo speakers are simply unable to use the English language effectively - making them unsuited for participation in the economy.
I really feel for new Kiwis who are still coming to grips with the language to be confronted by Te Reo camouflaged within a seemingly English document. This simply does not support the idea of aiding efficient communication.
If we are to have Te Reo and raise it to a similar level that of English (ironically the modern lingua-Franca), I think that the only reasonable way forward is to have every official document completely bilingual as happens in Canada, where each page is divided in half with English on one side and French on the other.
This will of course greatly increase the cost of production, but will provide an opportunity for the otherwise unemployable.
My concern as a teacher is that so much time in schools is spent on Te Reo, but the kids can't read or write English let alone become accomplished in maths or science.
By all means learn genuine , not all the made up, Maori and not at the expense of the 3rs.
I believe extra incentives should be given to those teachers teaching literacy.and spelling to learn phonics . For example:how many and what are the vowels in English ? What are the most common spellings for the long' e ' ? What is a digraph? (Answers below)
We are right at the bottom of the heap in literacy in the English speaking world when once we were top. This is a disaster.
I have met many parents who are not at all happy about their young children being proficient in Te Reo but illiterate in English . This includes Maori parents.
There are 19 vowels in English- the long and short a e i o u (10), the r vowels ar, air,ir,, then au, oy, ou, ,the long oo and short oo and the schwa ( muttering sound)
The most common spellings of the long e are e-e in centipede, ea in seat,, ee in seen and e as in he.
A digraph is two letters written together that make one sound like ch,sh,th,zh,
wh,ng
This is absolutely basic phonics and there is considerably more to learn if you wish to teach basic literacy. and spelling .This is what teachers should be learning .thoroughly in at least primary school to raise our literacy and written standards.
The Maori vowels are different and are adding confusion . I predict a further decline in our international literacy status unless we get our priorities sorted out.
if you really want to test if the love for the language is 'real', just stop the money flow :)
all it takes to preserve a language is for a family to speak it. almost everyone who doesn't have english as native tongue manages to do it without state funding. what's different about this one?
I recently arrived back in NZ to find signs at Auckland Imternational Airport are now in Te Reo and then English. Given that the purpose of signs is to inform, not confuse, then to whom are the signs directed? Certainly not foreign tourists, who don’t speak Te Reo! And since almost all Māori also speak English, the use of Te Reo is redundant. Unless the purpose of the signs is to reassure visitors they’ve arrived in the southern bastion of wokeness?
Message:
I have regularly bought 250 g bars of Whittakers Creamy Milk chocolate. On a recent trip to my local supermarket, I had Creamy Milk on my list but could no longer find it on the shelf. Has this line been discontinued?
Kia ora Graham, Thank you for contacting us here at Whittaker’s. We are absolutely still crafting our Creamy Milk chocolate 😊 There is a possibility your super market still has our Miraka Kirīmi in stock – so look for the exact same blue labelling.
Nga mihi,Ashleigh
Ashleigh
I am sorry, I should have realised that you are using the Maori language both in your greetings and the label, a language which I am afraid I neither speak nor understand.
I speak Swahili, Arabic, French and a smattering of several other languages but I am afraid I do not see the point of taking on Maori which is not even widely used in this country. When Henry Williams and Colenso published the first of Maori dictionary in the early 19th century they could find only 700 words – today there are several thousand words almost all neologisms. When one considers that that the Maori did not have milk or cream, words like "kirimi" are just nonsense.
I apologise for being contentious, but facts are facts…
Graham
Kia ora Graham,
Thanks for letting us know your thoughts. We are really proud to give our tautoko to Te wiki o te reo Maori. We appreciate the way you have shared your view on this topic. Have a great day and we hope you enjoy some of our delicious chocolates soon.
Ashleigh
Te reo is fine for those with spare time and sapre intellectual capacity and chance to exploit in their employment. But most of us do not have any of these. We are fully occupied trying to keep up with the damands of now ever changing employment. There are a myriad interest and hobbies I wish to pursue before learning now mostly contrived te reo. I started to prepare a luist of interst priorities. it ran to pages and ended with te reo, and long after Old English.
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