Te Reo Maori Education

Te Reo Maori means Maori language, which is spoken in New Zealand as a second longuage. However, it is very serious problem that fewer people can speak Maori Language in recent year, even it is an official language. Losing their language is not good for native speaker. They trid to spread their language through the education like in the school. And then, the NZ government made some act to keep Maori language.

Do you think there are any Maori language classes in New Zealand? Because it became official Language in 1989, there are Maori language classes. However, it is not essential to take language class in public school. So, how can children learn Maori language as their second language? There are schools for people who want to study Maori language. They are called Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Maori.
By the end of 1970’s native speakers noticed that Maori language was going to disappear in the early future, so they had a meeting about “How can we keep and spread our language and culture?” And then, they decided to make a school for studying Maori language and culture. The first Kohanga Reo was established in 1982, and about 100 Kohanga Reo were built in the same year as the the first one. Kohanga Reo is for infants from birth to 4 years old. This means Kohanga Reo is like a preschool for them. The native speakers tried to share their knowledge with them. After finishing Kohanga Reo, they can go Kura Kaupapa Maori as a primary school. It was established in 1985 to help children being more knowledgeable about Maori language and culture. From 5 to 16 years old children can study there. Both in Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Maori, students are not allowed to speak English. However, it is a problem that students tend to speak English in the school, like we speak Japanese in English conversation class. All parents in New Zealand can send their children either to an English medium school or Maori program school, such as Kura Kaupapa Maori. Unfortunately, many parents do not let their children to go Maori program school, but a general English program school. There were also efforts of the NZ government to keep and spread Maori language. They were related to media, such as TV and radio program.

In 1989, there was an Education Amendment Act, which was including about Maori education. Therefore, the NZ government reserves the radio and TV program for Maori. Since this act was constituted, the TV and radio programs for learning Maori language and culture increased. There are two famous names related to media about Maori, Te Mangai Paho and Mai Time. Te Mangai Paho is a Maori Broadcasting Funding Agency, which was established in 1993. It did a good job to promote Maori language and culture for people who live in New Zealand. They broadcast the radio program for 8 hours every day and made Maori language program CDs and music. As for Mai Time, this is the name of a TV station, which has broadcast Maori TV programs every week since 1996. In 2004, a great Maori TV program, called Maori Television began broadcasting on March 28 2004. This TV program changed the people’s mind. (what do you mean, How did it change people’s mind?) It has been passed 5 years since Maori Television first broadcast. There is a fact that 84% of New Zealanders consider it is important TV program for people and it should be broadcast forever. Also, 73% of Maori and 46% of New Zealanders believe that Maori Television make a valuable contribution to New Zealander’s sense of nationhood.

Maori language is not so difficult to learn for Japanese people, because the pronunciation of the words are similar. These are some Maori words below. We can pronunce them same as Japanese ローマ字. Kia ora means "Hello" in English. Au means "I" or "me". The meaning of Koe is "you". "Book" in Maori language is Pukapuka, which is somehow interesting to hear for Japanse. And, "newspaper" is almost same pronunciation as English, Niupepa.
I'm going to take Maori language class if there were the classes of it at NUFS. I think I would find it easy to learn, since the pronunciation is easy for us. I hope more and more people living in New Zealand will speak Maori Language. They should not lose it, but keep and spread.

Settlers

There were a lot of people who came in New Zealand to get a better chance in life. Even now, there are many foreigner who want to get the chance in New Zealand. The settlers from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland went to New Zealand hundreds ago. Because they came New Zealand by ship, it took for about four months to get New Zealand from their country.
We are sure that the voyage of them were so terrible. The ships were not better than now, of course. They needed to survive on the ship for four months. There were not enough food and water, so it was so hard to live there. The sanitary conditions were bad. Therefore once illness came out on the ships, it spreaded rapidly over the ships, and then many people died because of it.

Captain Hobson, an important British navel officer went to New Zealnd to make a treaty with Maori People. Because there were few people could understand Maori language, he had a translater, his name was Henry Williams. These two people are the important person, because they tried to change the New Zealand. If they didn't come to New Zealand, people in New Zealand would not have strong relationship with Britain.

We can go wherever we want with in several hours or some more hours by plane. However, they only used ships. I can't believe this. I am lucky to live in this era.