Tikumu’s letter

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 14

Tikumu’s letter

Dear Readers, This month’s message from those who have organised the International Year of the Child is that we should develop our multi-cultural society. These are big words: but in simple terms they mean that we. should appreciate our Maori people and new New 1 Zealanders because their language, customs and stories can bring to us first-hand what otherwise we can only read in books. They enrich our way of life. Lots of us found it strange to hear Maori spoken on television and radio recently, but we shouldn’t have. The Maoris were here before the first white settlers. Those settlers, particularly the missionaries, learned Maori, as well as teaching the Maoris to speak English. So that the Maori people could understand their teaching, the early English missionaries set about turning the spoken language into a written one, because they wanted the Maoris to read the Bible in their own language. Bishop Williams and Archdeacon Maunsell spent years on this work, and in 1853 the Maori Bible was completed. We, in Canterbury date our European history from the arrival of the First Four Ships at the end of 1850, only three years later. But in 1835, before Canterbury and Christchurch were being thought of as a settlement, the first sections of the Maori Bible were printed by Mr William Colenso, a printer by traded but a missionary by nature. Many Maoris wanted to became Christians. They welcomed the Bible to help them; and through that . early Bible they gained their written language. As time went by, the Maori children learned to read English, and to talk it. Their native language fell ;into disuse, much to the < distress of their elders.

Today there is a new awareness of the need for a knowledge of the Maori langauge if we are to keep alive the history of our own country, because it is so closely linked with the Maori people.

When we call ourselves New Zealanders or Kiwis, we really mean that we come from a South Pacific country of three islands that were settled by Maoris, then by British settlers and a host of other Europeans. Since then we have had many other Pacific Islanders come to join us. We have also had Indians, Chinese and other Asians arrive, all are New Zealnders or “Kiwis.” We can live in harmony only by understanding their customs and beliefs; and by learning something of their languages, as they have to learn ours. Soldiers of World War II recall that the Maoris arriving in Italy soon found that they could talk to the Italians in their language much more easily than the pakehas Could. There is no similarity in the written languages, but the softness, even the lilt of the spoken words brought the Maoris and Italians together.

Some of the earliest European visitors to New Zealand described the Maori people as being musical and vigorous in speech, rich in throat and chest notes that could be made to sound liquid, virile, soft or ringing. How true this is, still. Today we have Maori singers, in classical opera and in pop music, who are famous throughout the world.

We will not all learn to speak Maori as it should be spoken, but we can try to pronounce Maori names as they should sound. For instance, when we pass through the township of Tai Tapu on the way to Akaroa, we can call it “Tie Tarpoo.” That is much closer to the Maori way of saying it. Haere ra!