ANTON MATTHEWS: Kia ora kotou katoa, Anton Matthews here
I'm here with the team at Stuff and today we're answering some of those awkward, difficult
questions that you're probably thinking
but you're a little bit too embarrassed to ask. So, yeah, let's get to those answers.
PERSON 1: I'm white, can I speak Māori?
ANTON: In short, yes, absolutely, speaking te reo Māori has nothing to do with the colour
of your skin
If you're black, brown, white, pink, purple, it doesn't really matter. It's all about attitude
and if you're giving it your best shot, and you're really trying your hardest
that's actually the thing that counts the most.
Equally, if you are black or brown and you're not giving it a go and you're mocking te reo
Māori then you're an egg.
So it's got nothing to do with the colour of your skin, it's all about attitude and
effort. So give it a go, give it a crack, do your best.
PERSON 2: We've always said it this way, why change it now?
ANTON: Yeah look, saying something for a long time or doing something for a long time doesn't
make it right, and I suppose times have changed and New Zealanders are proud of te reo Māori.
It is a taonga, it is a treasure that belongs to all of us, and we should all take pride
in it and make an effort.
So, look, talk to people and be open to changing and be open to new things, and make an effort
to pronounce things correctly, as they should be.
It's a beautiful language, especially when we say words and place names the way they
ought to be pronounced.
PERSON 3: So if I mispronounce a word, is that going to mean something totally different
and embarrassing to what I expect?
ANTON: Yeah, good question. Sometimes mispronouncing a word can change or alter the meaning dramatically
for example keke versus kēkē, and the word wētā versus weta.
Eating a wētā is pretty disgusting, but not quite as disgusting as eating a weta.
So yeah, actually, making an effort to pronounce and getting it right is really, really important
and I suppose the most important thing is if you see a macron, make sure you make an
effort to pronounce it.
PERSON 4: So Anton, what's the deal with the word pākehā.
ANTON: Yeah, the word pākehā has created a lot of debate over the years, it seems to
sort of rear its head every single year
So my understanding of the word pākehā is that it comes from the word pākehakeha which
is a fair-skinned, mythical being, I suppose
You've got to, sort of put yourself in those of Māori all those years ago when Cook turned
up on the Endeavour with his big, beautiful waka, big beautiful ships
with big beautiful sails, it would've been as if aliens had landed in Aotearoa
and then those people jumped off their waka, they were fair-skinned, dressed in red coats,
and then they started rowing backwards as if they had eyes in the back of their heads.
It really would've been as if aliens had landed in Aotearoa.
And so the word that Māori used to describe this very group of people was pākehakeha,
maybe this is the fair-skinned, mythical creature that we've been talking about all of these
years
and then over the years it's been shortened to pākehā.
I've heard all sorts of random and wrong and incorrect translations or interpretations
of that word pākehā, like it means white pig.
I can promise you, it doesn't. White pig, poaka ma. Okay, not pākehā, very, very different
word.
So the word pākehā, in my opinion, is a beautiful word, I am pākehā as well as being
Māori and it describes a really, really small group of people in this world
and they are the people that arrived in Aotearoa, not in Australia, not in anywhere else in
the world. That arrived in Aotearoa, from Europe and their descendants.
So it's actually a really, really nice way to describe the very first settlers from Europe
who landed in Aotearoa here and their descendants.
A lot of people use the word New Zealand-European to describe themselves, but I have a lot of
friends who are New Zealanders who have no emotional attachment whatsoever to Europe
and so it doesn't really make sense to call themselves New Zealand-Europeans, and so they
use the word pākehā with pride.
It's not a derogatory term if you're looking for a way to sort of identify who you are
as a caucasian New Zealander
I believe pākehā is bang on.
PERSON 5: What's a word everyone gets wrong?
ANTON: A word that everyone gets wrong, in my experience, ironically enough is the word
"Māori" and also "te reo Māori"
So Māori has a macron, so we're looking for a long "a" sound, Mā-or-i. Māori.
It kind of sounds a little bit like mouldy, as in a mouldy piece of cheese, or a mouldy
piece of bread
and I don't mean that in an offensive way, that's just how it sounds.
So if you think of a mouldy piece of cheese or a mouldy piece of bread, and you're pretty
much 90% of the way there
Māori, Māori. What we're trying to steer away from is "mow-ri", and sort of steer more
towards "Māori". Māori.
And then if you want to talk about the language, te reo Māori, think about a teddy bear or
a Ted Talk
Ted - te reo, te reo - Māori. Te reo Māori.
Kia ora, thank you so much for tuning in, I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you learned
something today. Go out there, use what you learned, normalise te reo Māori one word
at a time.