Learning a language you love when you are non-speaking

Tuesday, 6 September 2022

Geneva Hakaraia-Tino has a vision that all tāngata whaikaha Māori will be able to communicate in te reo, including those who are non-speaking and use communication devices. (Video first published on September 2, 2022)

Geneva Hakaraia-Tino has a vision that all tāngata whaikaha Māori will be able to communicate in te reo – including those who are non-speaking.

Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.

She grew up surrounded by role models and a rich culture at Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland, which she describes as a privilege.

But Hakaraia-Tino (Ngāpuhi and Te Aupōuri) understands the barriers that people who are non-speaking face when communicating in te reo.

She was born with cerebral palsy and has limited speech abilities; it was her parents’ dream for her to attend Māori-medium education but it wasn’t possible because of the limited services available for students who were non-speaking.

Geneva Hakaraia-Tino has cerebral palsy and limited speech abilities. She is developing a synthetic te reo voice.

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Hakaraia-Tino understands the barriers that people who are non-speaking face when communicating in te reo.

“I was basically written off by people,” she says. “It was bad enough I had a disability, but I am also non-speaking so, in the eyes of the very ablest society we live in, it was better if I was just put somewhere in the background and that was it.”

Not being able to communicate in a language that is so important to you can often leave a person in a place of silence and te ao pōuriuri (a world of darkness) as they cannot express their whakaaro (thoughts) or participate in te ao Māori, Hakaraia-Tino says.

But what people around her didn’t realise was that she was “soaking up everything” she was hearing, she says. “I loved the eloquence of te reo being spoken.”

Her desire to learn te reo is embedded in her being and, five years ago, she enrolled in a course at university to continue her reo journey.

She can now confidently hold a kōrero in te reo and deliver a mihi at hui. She says it “really makes my heart happy” knowing how much she’s advanced in her reo and how much she can understand now.

But learning te reo was the “easy part”. Hakaraia-Tino quickly realised there were many barriers when learning a language through a communication device that was designed to speak and pronounce English words.

She initially tried phonetically spelling Māori words, but the current voices available (her “accent” is Australian because it’s the closest to a synthesised New Zealand accent) “butchers” te reo Māori and “it’s just not acceptable”, she says.

Te reo is a beautiful language, but her device doesn't to it any justice, she says.

“It's quite embarrassing,” she adds.

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Now, she’s now taken it upon herself to develop a synthetic te reo voice that pronounces words correctly with the eloquence she loves about te reo Māori.

That is how her project Tua o Te Pae was born.

It started with a conversation with the TalkLink Trust, an organisation that supports disabled people to find communication solutions, often through AAC (augmentative and alternative communication).

Hakaraia-Tino got in touch with speech-language therapist Ann Smaill, who is also the chief executive at the TalkLink Trust, to discuss how they could get this project off the ground.

The two have known each other for most of Hakaraia-Tino’s life.

Smaill says the organisation always recognised that it wasn’t able to give tangata whenua the tools to communicate in te reo.

“We’ve done all sorts of work around trying to make that easier for [Hakaraia-Tino], but she’s had to use AAC systems that use English and a very poor job of using te reo.

“It’s been one of those frustrations we’ve all had for a very long time,” Smaill says.

Hakaraia-Tino explains that it’s more than a frustration for her.

“Being unable to converse in te reo Māori is likely to significantly affect the mental and spiritual wellbeing of tangata whaikaha Māori, as well as their connection with whānau and community.”

A brand new voice

AAC devices use text to speech technology with software that generates synthetic digitised speech.

While there are a number of international companies that specialise in creating synthetic voices and languages, they mostly develop mainstream and European languages.

Hakaraia-Tino says having a te reo synthetic voice will mean she can finally express herself in te reo and share the language she’s learnt over many years.

Smaill says indigenous languages with smaller populations, like te reo Māori, are threatened the most because there hasn’t been a lot of work or development put into them. But progress is being made.

“I think the technology is almost there that we can realise some of those dreams to get to smaller indigenous languages synthesised,” Smaill says.

It has taken some time for them to find the right company for the job, not just regarding the technology, but also one that was respectful and culturally appropriate.

Hakaraia-Tino says it is really important the company understands and values tikanga Māori.

They have started a relationship with synthetic voice technology company The Voice Keeper, which is based in Israel.

The Voice Keeper has the technology to develop and meet the needs of a synthetic te reo voice, but first, the Tua o Te Pae project needs to raise $800,000. Hakaraia-Tino envisions a voice could be developed within the next two years.

In the meantime, she is reaching out to networks within the disability and Māori communities to make sure they get it right.

They have developed a whānau group who will guide them from a family perspective about what the project needs to take into consideration, and they’ve also formed a kaupapa group for individuals with expertise to support the project.

While the scope of Tua o Te Pae has a focus on using a synthetic voice within communication devices, once developed, there is potential for a much wider application.

The development of a synthetic te reo voice could also be used in screen reader technology that is used by the blind and low-vision community and assistive technology to support people with print challenges, such as dyslexia.

Having a te reo synthetic voice would also support the development of a synthetic voice for other Pacific languages which are linguistically similar, Hakaraia-Tino says.

Hakaraia-Tino says she’ll feel real sense of achievement when she's able to provide non-speaking tāngata whaikaha Māori with a voice to communicate in te ao Māori.

On a personal level, she says having a te reo synthetic voice will mean she can finally express herself in te reo and share the language she’s learnt over many years.

“For too long we have been living in a society, particularly in the Māori community, where we are undermined and overlooked.”

She says that needs to change and that's what drives her to do this project.

The project also aims to support people to be in a place of enlightenment where their voices are heard, she says.

“Māori AAC users and their whānau long for the day when they can share their mihi and stand in their own mana as a Māori speaker,” says Hakaraia-Tino.

“But for now, they are left asking, why does my culture, language and education continue to be withheld from me in this way?”