Triumph of te reo

The adoption of Māori words into English is an affirmation of a voice that will not be silenced, writes Marty Pilott.

- Marty Pilott

The addition of some te reo Māori words to the Oxford English Dictionary caused a stir earlier this year, with charges of assimilation and worse. Such concern is understandable, given the history of appropriation of Maori culture, art and, of course, land.

However, I believe the concern here is misplaced. The inclusion of Māori words is neither new nor limited to the Oxford dictionary. More significantly for te reo, when words are taken from one language into another, it is the giver, not the taker, who acquires the mana.

"Borrowing", as it is called, is universal. Whenever two communities communicate with one another, there will be a trade in words for many reasons. It can be an equal trade, but often it has been the result of conquest and colonisation. The majority of English words come from other languages: from the Vikings, from Latin, from the Normans. In each of these cases, English was the inferior language, the conquered people forced to accept foreign words to replace their own or to express new concepts.

The current debate about changing colonial place names back to their original Māori (such as restoring Russell to Kororāreka) reminds us that colonisers sometimes created their own names for places, flora and fauna which already had local names. For example, many fish, such as the blue cod (rāwaru), were given English names because of their resemblance to those found in European waters.

On the other hand, settlers accepted the Māori names of many trees, plants, fish and birds. Nīkau, kōwhai, kea, kākāpō - the list is huge. In the meantime, Maori borrowed a large number of kupu (words) from English. These include names of animals and concepts that the settlers brought with them: nūpepa (newspaper), hipi (sheep), kura (school or learning), kāwana (governor) käwhe (calf) and so on.