Luke Kaa-Morgan (Tainui Āwhiro, Ngāti Tahinga, Pākehā) is Te Pouarataki mō te hikoi — Treaty guide for the Baptist Union’s National Support Centre.
Every year since 1975, Aotearoa New Zealand has marked Māori Language Week. It’s an opportunity for all New Zealanders to celebrate te Reo Māori (the Māori language) and to use more Māori phrases in everyday life.
In 2024, Māori Language Week runs from 14 to 21 September.
We have curated some helpful online language resources to explore.
- Manawa Māori regularly posts useful everyday phrases and vocabulary on Instagram @manawamaori. Their posts follow a theme such as phrases for greeting people, for when you’re using public transport or telling your friends you’re grateful for them. You could really make someone’s day by telling them, “ko koe taku tino’!
- Taringa Podcast is a Te Wānanga o Aotearoa initiative available at taringapodcast.com, on Spotify and other popular hosting platforms. With a mixture of Māori and English, the Taringa podcast helps you learn te reo and tikanga Māori in a fun and relaxed way. There’s a bit of everything in these podcasts: in episode 332, the hosts play snippets of an interview from 1978 with the famous Whaia McClutchie, who speaks about the role of women on the Marae, while episode 302 is about the Te Reo Māori Disney movies.
- Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori - Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori is the Māori Language Commission. It promotes, celebrates and encourages people to learn and speak te Reo Maori. It also helps ensure te reo Māori remains a living language by developing new words (kupu) so that it is used effectively in a changing world; that’s where you get words such as rorohiko (computer), which was formed by merging roro (brain) and hiko (electric), and īmēra (email) which is just a good old transliteration.
Photo: Baptist National Hui 2023 pōwhiri, by Morgan Dews.
