Kōrero is key to learning te reo, says Māori language champion

Thursday, 22 December 2022

Reo Māori advocate Pānia Papa has recently voiced a reo Māori audiobook of Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone. (Image description: Papa stands in front of a Book Awards media wall, smiling at the camera and holding a picture book titled ‘I Waho, i te Moana’.)

For mana wahine and reo expert Pānia Papa (Ngāti Korokī-Kahukura, Ngāti Mahuta), the journey of te reo Māori revitalisation has paralleled her life experience.

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

Over the past 30 years, Papa has been a television presenter, language consultant, language teacher, curriculum and resource developer, adult performing group leader, translator and language strategy and education programme reviewer. Now she is turning her attention to reo Māori audiobooks.

Papa recently celebrated the launch of the reo Māori audiobook of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

Papa, is the chief executive of Kotahi Rau Pukapuka, a company whose kaupapa is to translate 100 quality books in te reo Māori.

Te reo Māori versions of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Paulo Coelho's Alchemist have been recorded in audiobook format. (Image description: cover art for Hare Pota me te Whatu Manapou and Te Ruānuku.)

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Kotahi Rau Pukapuka Trust is behind the kaupapa to produce 100 books in te reo Māori. (Image description: Miriama Kamo, Pānia Papa, Mike Dreaver, Dr Karena Kelly, and Jason Witehira stand close together smiling at the camera).)

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Having voiced the audiobook for Hare Pota me te Whatu Manapou with Tiare Tawera, Papa says talking and listening is the best way to feel connected to the language.

Te Ataarangi reflects the efficacy of language learning from oral transmission. (Image description: Four adults gather around a table laid out with colourful cuisenaire rods.)

“Listening enables the rhythm and sound of spoken Māori language to be captured. For Māori language, traditionally an oral language, the best avenue for its transmission is whakarongo [or] kōrero.”

Feel confident in using these greetings and farewells in te reo Māori (first published in 2019).

Traditionally te reo was passed down orally, however that chain of transmission was interrupted for a variety of reasons including colonisation and the Native Schools Act, Papa said.

“So now people are having to learn Māori formally in education settings rather than it being transmitted naturally in the home. So for me, audiobook formats are getting back to that natural way of transmitting te reo by listening and then the spoken word carries quite a different mauri than when you’re reading it in the pages of a book,” she said.

“Any language I believe is best learned through listening … there are a lot of learners today who have a lot of knowledge of the language receptively but don’t have the confidence or the strength necessarily to be able to produce that language.

“There’s a big gap between what you know and what you’re able to say, as a learner.”

Papa has made significant contributions to the reo Māori education space as well as being an advocate. She was an independent reviewer of the Government’s Māori language strategy and the Māori language sector, and is a teacher within the Institute of Excellence of the Māori Language (Te Panekiretanga o Te Reo).

Papa is one of three teachers in the newly established Master of Māori Language Excellence and the national co-ordinator of Takatū which has provided popular reo learning programmes, Māori language versions of global cartoons and an online learning system.

“When you’re listening through and then having to repeat what you’ve heard in a safe environment where the models are as excellent as possible, that is the ultimate in learning te reo,” Papa said.

“A good example of that is Te Ataarangi and how that movement has been going since the time of kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa and it’s such a popular way of learning because I think people have an affinity to listening and then practising what they’ve heard.”

Te Ataarangi is a learning methodology designed for adult Māori language learning modelled on The Silent Way method using colourful rākau and spoken languages, as opposed to traditional grammar-based academic learning approaches.

Papa’s hope for the future is “to continue having excellent Māori language content in all spaces, whether that’s digital, in the publishing space or in music … there’s so much content being created at the moment and I think that’s quite a key marker for this current decade we’re in,” she said.

“This is the decade of digital content. I think that’s going to help provide a good platform for the Māori language revitalisation initiatives that are going to come out of this decade.”