Last year on my arrival I dived into a Maori class but was too late for real enrolment so I quit, deciding to start properly this year. With different teachers I thought it might even be better than the other one, but although they are lovely people, it is a real challenge. The class consists of about twenty public servants working in the same building as this school, which is in reality a Maori couple from Porirua using the office space who have elected to pass on their language and culture to all who are interested to learn. The mixed batch, 90 per cent female, are an interesting study in themselves. It is a supremely friendly class, led by the Maori married couple who use music with the help of a guitar to help us learn - a method I always use myself in teaching French, but without a guitar.
With the help of generous financial assistance from the NZ government, they offer a thirty six week course, at no cost at all to the participants, to learn at least the basis of this quite complex language. I'm afraid they are not trained teachers, but Maori is their tongue, they are passionate about it, and they want others to learn. However with the immersion-style method they use, the majority of the class, all Kiwis, some Maori, already have quite a solid basis having lived here all their lives and grown up in a culture, while predominantly Anglo Celtic, has a strong Maori influence. They are naturally tuned in to the sound and know many words which I have no idea of. This is where my patience must come in, as I am impatient to learn this language but it is going to be a very slow haul. My hearing also not being the absolute best, sometimes I feel a little left behind.
I can only hope that eventually I will catch up, although I am scheduled to miss four classes with my imminent trip to the US interrupting the course. We do learn from the first day some lovely Maori melodies and that is one of the greatest benefits for me, to do some singing, and the Maori language is just made for song, lyrical and sonorous, it is an essential part of the Maori experience.
Below I have attached words of one of the 'karakia' - songs which we are learning, hopefully one day I will know them by heart, 'cos at present, to use the vernacular, 'I know nuttin'. Maori is a very phonetic language, not like English, horribly un-phonetic, so I just have to get used to their very different grammar, which is much simpler than ours, but quite loose in its structure. However I will succeed!
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