A New Zealand academic says the Government is shirking its duty to stem the declining numbers of the country's Pacific language speakers.
Transcript
A New Zealand academic says the Government is shirking its duty to stem the declining numbers of the country's Pacific language speakers.
Recent data released by Statistics New Zealand from the 2013 census shows more New Zealand born Pacific people can not speak their native language compared to the 2006 census.
A senior education lecturer at Auckland University, John McCaffery, says the New Zealand Government is shying away from its responsibility to preserve these languages.
He told Daniela Maoate-Cox the numbers of speakers were low to start with and the languages are closer to becoming extinct.
JOHN MCCAFFERY: There's been a significant drop in the number of people who are able to speak a Pacific language and a very significant drop in the New Zealand born populations. For instance, in the Cook Island community, the figures say that only 3.6 percent of the New Zealand born Cook Island population can now speak Cook Island Maori, only 7.5 percent of the New Zealand born Niue population can speak Vagahau Niue and only 18 percent of the Tokelau community. So that's the languages of the realm, they are most at risk. The other two, Samoan and Tongan, have always been higher but they have dropped overall for Samoans to 55 percent of the total population in New Zealand and Tongan to 53.
DANIELA MAOATE-COX: These are some very low numbers. What does this mean for Pasifika people?
JM: Basically we predicted in the 2007 and 2008 that these languages would become extinct. And when you get only 3 percent of the New Zealand born population actually receiving the language from their parents it means that in essence they are already extinct. Because that generation of young people under 15 are unable to be speakers anymore.
DMC: So the languages are clearly in quite a dire state. But why should they be preserved, what's the benefit?
JM: Well you are looking at the disappearance of a whole culture, history and heritage, and traditions that are carried by the languages. UNESCO considers that the languages of the world carry a peoples history and heritage. All of those things will change, if not disappear if the languages go.
DMC: Is it a unique situation in New Zealand in that there are at least 5 different languages that would have to be accommodated for in a school? How could the government even start to approach that?
JM: Yes well we have a main responsibility to the languages of the realm, and I know that we have talked about this before. But people from those places are NZ citizens so the view of the UN is that NZ has a constitutional responsibility to the people of those countries. And I don't think anybody is asking for every school to have a program. For instance the data from the census on Cook Island communities says if there were two programs, one in Mangere and one in East Tamaki, virtually 80 percent of all those Cook Island people that wanted to have access to the language could do so.
DMC: So the solution here is not to roll out a nationwide program which will teach five different languages but instead to target communities and put in programs for those specific communities?
JM: Yes and pilot programmes. If the government is unsure as they claim to be as to whether or not these measures would raise academic achievement, well surely what you do is you establish a pilot programme to test the truth or not of that. But the fact the government is refusing to even establish a pilot program suggests that they don't want to know whether it is successful or not, because on the basis of some ideology, they have already ruled it out. And of course that's just a continuation of the neo-colonial policies that New Zealand pursued with Maori education.
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