Media Release:

Te Reo has ‘no chance’ of survival claims iwi leader
20 October 2010

Maori academic and Ngapuhi leader, David Rankin, has responded to today’s Waitangi Tribunal report on Te Reo Maori by arguing that the Maori language will not survive as a living language beyond just a few more generations.

Mr Rankin (who is a fluent native speaker of Te Reo) says that the point has come where Maori can no longer compete with English “Even those few of our children and grand children who are learning Maori still converse exclusively in English, that is the future and we have to face up to it.”

“Te Reo will still be used for ceremonial purposes”, Mr. Rankin says, “much in the way Latin was in the Catholic Church. More people still speak Latin than Maori now, and Latin is a Dead Language. I believe Maori will share the same fate”.

Mr. Rankin believes that the $100 million spent annually on various efforts to prop up Te Reo would be better invested in other areas of Maori development. “We as a people need to look to the future, and not be tied up to the false belief that without the language the culture will die. Did Italian culture die when they lost Latin? Did Russian culture die when they lost Old Slavonic? Mari culture is stronger than the language”

ENDS

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