Down here in New Zealand, there is a strong emphasis on rejuvenating the indigenous Māori language. Māori make up about 17% of the New Zealand population.
Despite their present-day struggles – deep-seated racism, poverty, high unemployment, and disproportionate representation in the prison population – the Māori have roots in Aotearoa (New Zealand) deeper than any other group. They arrived as seafarers around 1250 AD and settled across both large islands, naming rivers, lakes, mountains, and other places in their language centuries before Europeans set foot on the land and began colonisation.
Māori vis-à-vis Hindi
Māori was made an official language in 1987 alongside English, and since then, there has been a major push to encourage all New Zealanders to learn it. The government funds Māori-language books, TV, radio, and multimedia. There are challenges: Māori was spoken in different dialects and had no script, so Te Reo – the official version – is a somewhat standardised blend written in an adapted Roman script. It is not widely used in daily life in the same way that Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Konkani or Santhali are in India.
Still, I love how Māori words sound: Wahine (woman), Tamariki (children), Aroha (compassion, sustaining love), and, of course, Kia ora (hello!).
Because most Māori people today use English as their first or only language, there is constant alarm about saving this language. Māori...
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