Maori - 20 April

Since the end of February, when I started with Maori, I've struggled to find a good text/resource. I've used at least three.

The first was a 100-year-old newspaper: Te Pipiwharauroa. I began my exposure to Maori by simply copying out a whole page.

The second was an online copy of Lyndsay Head's book: Making Maori Sentences. I stuck with it for a month or two, but the thing is extremely grammar-focused. I couldn't live with it.

Now, I'm running with Te Rangatahi Bk 1. I've completed the first (tuatahi) chapter. So far so good!

What do you expect?

I expected, upon returning to New Zealand, that I would have less time to devote to my language activities because I would have classes to teach. And yet, I dearly looked forward to kicking off Arabic, Chinese, Maori, Norwegian and Russian. Five more languages to take my total to 15 (let's include English in the tally).

If I can spare a couple of hours per day (I thought), or two hours and twenty minutes, then that amounts to 10 minutes per language (this time excluding English; it will just have to manage).

I don't think that this will be a problem. Ten minutes ought to be enough, if my method is indeed as good as an hour of traditional study. It's easily six times as efficient, I believe.

Therefore, I'm looking at 365 days divided by 6 number of hours per language, or 61 hours. If I set my age of retirement as the conclusion of this experiment - which is two years from now - then I'm spending, say, 125 hours on each of my 14 languages.

It will be interesting to discover whether the whole thing is doable. Whether it doesn't lead to too much strain. And whether the languages help each other along, rather than slow each other's progress.

Maori motivation

New Zealand has 3 official languages, one of which is Maori. One, I already know. Another - sign language - I'm not sure I'd consider a language as such (although I'm open to being convinced) - and the third I feel would be very useful to know, and for reasons other than of political correctness.

As yet I only know the odd word or phrase, pronunciation guidelines, and some theory about word order (i.e. 3%). At most places of work and elsewhere, people are encouraged to use Maori greetings and the like. But to me that feels like a token gesture. It's not much more than lip service.

I need something more authentic. I want to learn the actual language. I want a book!

The ABCs of multi-lingual-ism

It happens to be the start of 2020 as I put pen to paper (well, it was). The time feels right to start a new blog. It's time for a New Year's resolution. It's time for a challenge. A language acquisition challenge.

Initially, I thought of setting a 365-day goal. But I feel that would be too gimmicky - it doesn't feel authentic. Plus, I have life that I'd like to live alongside of this project. Life-work balance and all that.

So I'll take it fairly easy. I've no problem with that - I've already opted to work only part time (0.6). And in a couple of years I'll be eligible to retire. All in all, I'm not going to turn this into a big deal. I wish to spend no more than a couple of hours per day on this exercise. In terms of language-learning, therefore, I'll see how I fare with just a few languages, not too many. I'll settle for an even dozen.

I've selected them according to the alphabet. They each start with a different letter, so that'll make it easier to name and keep track of them.

• A is for Arabic
• C is for Chinese
• D is for Dutch
• E is for English (which I don't count as one of the 12)
• F is for French
• G is for German
• H is for Hindi
• J is for Japanese
• M is for Maori
• N is for Norwegian
• P is for Polish
• R is for Russian
• and S will be for Spanish

I think that's a fair swag.