16 September 2024
It's Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (14-21 Sept) and we're kicking it off with an interview with our incredible Kaiārahi ‑ Māori Cultural Liaison (Hauraki, Waikato), Barb O'Loughlin. In this korero you'll learn about Barb's journey in learning te reo and what she loves most about this beautiful, vibrant language.
To hear Barb kōrero you’d think she is fluent in te reo Māori. But she’d be quick to tell you she’s not. “I’m learning all the time, and I can speak te reo but it’s a journey.” Getting the grammar right is what most people find difficult about learning a language, and Barb says she is no different. “At the moment I'm learning a more formal and ancient form of te reo and it's like learning Shakespearean. It’s very challenging.”
Barb’s love for te reo was ignited by her mother, Kahurangi Watana Mataira Taylor. “She was a fluent speaker of te reo, and in the 1960s my mum, alongside a group of Māori women (led by Dr Letty Brown- Nana Letty), formed a Māori Playcentre in Te Atatū North (now known as Te Atatū Peninsula), west Auckland,” Barb says.
“That was quite revolutionary. Not many people realise that before Kōhanga reo there was Māori Playcentre and the Māori Women’s Welfare League, and my mother was part of both. They were early mobilisers, my mother and her counterparts - living in an urban area, this was about reclamation of identity and the revitalisation of the Māori language. She was an advocate for Māori and I like to think I am too!”
As the youngest in her whānau Barb attended the Māori Playcentre and became involved in Te Rōpū Manutaki kapa haka group (under the tutelage of Sir Pita Sharples and whānau) and later Hoani Waititi Marae. But racism was overt in Aotearoa New Zealand at that time “and there were those who were trying to rid their streets of Māori people,” Barb says. “My father – a Lupudlian – worried that our family would be discriminated against, so our mother spoke to us in English in public, and in Māori and English at home.”
Over the course of her career Barb has been involved in total immersion te reo Māori initiatives. She is a member of Te Whare Tāhuhu Kōrero o Hauraki, a Hauraki reo revitalisation programme, led by Dr Korohere Ngāpō. She has completed Te Ahu o Te Reo Maōri, a reo language programme for teachers (Barb is a registered teacher) with renowned te reo Māori experts, Pania Papa and Leon Blake.
What she loves about the language is its poeticism and playfulness. “I just find it incredibly poetic,” she says. “And I think it’s because every word has a whakapapa. There's always a connection, so, for instance, the word aroha – ‘aro’ is focus and ‘ha’ the breath. It has been loosely translated to love, but it means so much more.
“And te reo is humorous. If you said some of the kīanga - the Māori sayings - in English, it would be seen as disrespectful. But it's playful, it's cheeky, and you can say things that you probably wouldn't be able to say in English!”
For anyone interested in learning te reo, Barb would suggest starting with Hēmi Kelly and Āpera Woodfine’s podcast, Everyday Māori. “It's on Spotify, and it gives you the pronunciation, the pronouns, the tenses, and they have a wonderful teaching style. To begin with it’s really about making sure that we get the sounds right, and not taking on too much,” she says. “People sometimes want me to write a full-on mihi for them, and I say, respectfully, let's just start working on simple language and getting those greetings right, like tēnā koe, kia ora. Singing is also a great way to learn a language."
For those more advanced, she’d recommend a university course such as Te Wananga Aotearoa or Te Wananga o Raukawa or attending a Kura Reo, a full reo immersion course offered by different iwi.
