Thank you, Listener, for that impressive issue for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (September 16). But should I feel sorry for your correspondent (Letters, September 23) who was put to the trouble of turning to page 21 for an English translation of Rāniera Procter’s Upfront column? I have even less sympathy for another correspondent who felt that te reo Māori was being imposed on him, apparently convinced that it is compulsory to read every page of the Listener.
My first encounter with te reo was at primary school when my Māori peers were chastised for speaking in what was then labelled “bad language”, like the words in reference to body parts that children learn not to use in the hearing of a teacher or parent.
Such negative labelling of a child’s “mother tongue” has been an egregious wound for generations of Māori, for which healing could only begin when Parliament accepted the 1972 Māori language petition.
