Dame Elizabeth Rata: Episode 2 - Early Schools, Intermarriage, Nation-building 1815-1877

In the video below Episode Two explains how English became accepted as the language of national unity. The Māori language remained in constant use. There were 42 Māori language newspapers, Māori travelled the country with books and slates, and attended the Māori instruction missionary schools. Literacy, in either or both languages, provided individuals with a new status. Waaka Te Huia's work as a paid scribe, writing in Māori, illustrates the modern man for the new world.

Damien Grant: Tamatha Paul calls English ‘a bastard language’ - She’s missing the point

English is a bastard language, claims Tamatha Paul. She declared, with a confidence devoid of comprehension: “It’s a bastardisation of Greek, Old Norse, Latin…”

Seems disrespectful. Let’s break this down.

Judy Gill: English is now an Official Language. The Ministry of Education must review its language policies.

The mixed te reo-English register now routine across New Zealand education did not appear overnight. Its policy roots stretch back decades — and one father’s refusal to accept it exposes a national question.

English is now, in statute, an official language of New Zealand.

Geoff Parker: If Official Status Doesn't Matter, Why Does It Matter?

Over the past week RNZ has published two articles criticising the English Language Act.

In the first, the Māori Language Commissioner argued that English never needed official recognition because it already dominates New Zealand society.

In the second, University of Waikato linguist Dr Julie Barbour went even further, describing English as a "predator language" that spread through conquest and colonialism, suggesting the legislation is "bizarre", unnecessary and simply reinforces English dominance.

Both arguments miss the point.

Ani O'Brien: I am proud to be British 🇬🇧

Is it okay to be proud of one's culture?

It has become fashionable all over the world to scoff at being British.

Mention you’re proud of your British heritage, and watch the room shift uncomfortably. Say you admire the culture that gave us Shakespeare, the Magna Carta, and the Industrial Revolution, and someone will interject with “colonialism!” faster than you can say “tea and scones.” Even in Britain, of all places, the Union Jack is more likely to be associated with shame than with shared identity.

Well, I’m not ashamed.

Sarah Ewall-Wice: Trump to make English the official first language of the United States

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday that makes English the official language of the United States.

The order allows government agencies to keep current policies and provide documents and services in other languages, but it provides flexibility to decide when and how to provide services in languages other than English, according to the White House.

David Farrar: Just use the language everyone in a conversation understands

Radio NZ reports:

Waikato public hospital has told nurses not to speak to patients in any language other than English.

A memo sent to all nursing staff last Friday, obtained by RNZ, said concerns had been raised about other languages being used, and that exclusive use of English in all clinical settings was safer for treating people.

DTNZ: Controversy erupts over hospital English language directive

A general manager at Palmerston North Hospital, in a WhatsApp message, instructed Indian nurses to stop using their native language in public spaces at work.

This followed a patient complaint about feeling “disrespected” by nurses speaking Malayalam, leading to an internal investigation.

David Lillis: An English Curriculum for Education and Teaching - not for Ideology

Creating a New English Curriculum

During 2022 and 2023 we saw much debate on the previous Labour government’s Refreshed New Zealand Curriculum - "Te Mātaiaho" (Ministry of Education, 2022). Following public release, there were mounting concerns about the near-absence of academic subject content, the heavily Treaty-centric nature of the proposed curriculum, and the embedding of traditional knowledge as central to every subject or “learning area” (e.g. Lillis, 2022a and 2022b; Lillis, 2023). 

James Kierstead: Why English is the Lingua Franca

Why does so much of the world speak English?

As someone who was born in Canada, educated in the UK and US, and has now been living in New Zealand for more than a decade, the question has always fascinated me. It’s also the question that the New Zealand historian James Belich sought to answer in his classic Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo World, which I’ve just finished reading.

Denis Hall: This is about setting up an English language and European cultural association.

The English Language is over a thousand years old – and that - and the Great Global European Culture and Civilisation needs to be a cause for celebration and veneration - and we need to do what we can to protect and preserve the language and culture as it exists in New Zealand - from alteration and bastardisation by a contentious government bent on cultural modification.

Our English needs to be able to be understood anywhere in the world - and we need a People's Association that will represent that cultural philosophy.

English - spoken and written - is our language - and the culture and society we all live in is powered by - and made understandable by the English Language - that without a doubt is one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet - and did in fact emanate out of Great Britain - and our culture out of Greater Europe.

It did not come from anywhere else.

Bruce Moon: Reflections - a Memoir

Step out of your comfort zone and the world may surprise you!

Margaret, my dear late wife, had been working with patients that afternoon at the Tibetan Delek Hospital at Gangkyi and had accepted a lift up the hill to our residence from some workmen in a utility van.  

I had been halfway down the hill to collect our laundry from the devoted little Indian who did it for us and I had set off up the hill with my load when a van drove up with a Tibetan driver and Margaret in the passenger seat.  Of course it stopped so I clambered into the back with a couple of Tibetan workmen and their shovels.

Denis Hall: The utter futility of nation-wide wall to wall maori language indoctrination?

I think this Essay will also be about the TRAVESTY of the subversion of truth in New Zealand’s twenty first century society.

Why do I keep hammering this issue?

Because the cost and the lies and deceit embedded in all this will come back to haunt this nation of ours - and we need at least some honest analysis of what is being done to us.

Teach Maori language by all means - but inserting a language that most people are not interested in learning - into the primary and necessary language - just causes widespread resentment.

English is globally important - and absolutely essential - and in New Zealand it is being abused and contaminated and disrespected by our sub-par establishment.

Denis Hall: Did you watch TV One News tonight?

My name is Denis Hall. I was born in New Zealand almost 81 years ago to European parents - also both born here - as were their parents and grandparents before them. We were pioneers.

On the day I was born my father was training to serve in the Army for this country in World War Two - and as a result of that Hitler decided it was an auspicious day to invade Russia.

Oh - and my mother tongue happens to be ENGLISH - with a touch of French and Irish back in the day.

If I were to consider learning another language - it would be French - or Chinese. I can already speak Irish - especially if I’m in an Irish mood.

I must be a cunning linguist.

I would like to learn French because I love the sound of it - and would love to be able to speak it - and know how to speak through my nose just like the French do ….. Oh bugger - is that racist to say that?

Joe Bennett: Evolving language scoffs at moral or political aims

She's well into her 70s, lives alone, has a science degree or two, speaks her mind, does not own a television, leaves her back door open in all weathers because fresh air helps her think, reads three books a week, is a lifelong socialist and she shins up ladders to pick plums, when she can’t, that is, get a passing newspaper columnist to do it for her.

And it was while the passing newspaper columnist was up the ladder a few weeks back that she said, a propos of I can no longer remember what, that she couldn’t be bothered with RNZ National any more because of all the Maori nonsense.

Well, you can imagine my reaction. I looked down from on high and she was bending to collect a dropped plum so I had an unimpeded view of her neck in the autumnal sunshine, and, would you believe it, it wasn’t remotely red. Not a hint of carmine. Scarletfree, it was. What could possibly be going on? This called for research.

Dennis Gates: Plain Language or Manglish?

The Plain Language Bill currently before Parliament could well be a touchstone for a very divisive issue confronting New Zealand, namely the use of mixed languages. The submissions to the Bill fall into three main categories - those simplistically supporting/opposing it; those drawing attention to people with reading disabilities and those that are opposed to mixing up languages.

Of the latter group a few attack the intermingling of Maori and English. One from the New Zealand Law Society suggests less use of Latin phrases.

As I see it, all three groups miss the point of the Bill.

Don Brash: Why is the Maori language being thrust down the throats of people with no interest in learning it?

Over the last few years, and especially since the current Government was elected late in 2020, there has been an increasing trend to use the Maori language where there are perfectly acceptable English alternatives.

Radio New Zealand is a particularly egregious offender: even though the taxpayer has provided many millions of dollars to support Maori-language radio stations, and a Maori TV channel, those of us who speak not a word of the Maori language and have not the slightest interest in learning it are forced to listen to a number of Maori words and phrases with no translation provided.

And the use of Maori words is becoming more and more common throughout the public sector.

Mike Butler: Tribute to language petitioner

When Tauranga woman Robin Bishop heard, about two years ago, that English had no official status, she contacted Tauranga MP Simon Bridges, who confirmed that to be true.

She found that its status is based on the fact that most people customarily speak it. The Maori language was declared official in 1987, and sign language in 2006.