I live in Aotearoa New Zealand.

It’s a small collection of small islands, way down in the south Pacific Ocean, a long way from most other people on the planet.

We’re technicall/officially a tri-lingual country, but most of us are monolingual. We speak a flat-voweled version of English with several unusual turns of phrase like “she’ll be right”, “sweet as” and “yeah, nah.”

But some people, and. increasingly more people, are learning to speak the mother tongue of our country, Te Reo Māori.

In 2019, thought I’d give it a crack.

I was a monolingual individual with a busy life, trying to learn a second language.

I’m a little bit driven, so as well as trying to learn a language, I’m trying to learn it really well. The goal is conversational fluency in a few years.

Of course, I had no idea what that means, or what is involved in getting there.

This blog is a record of my process, you're welcome to follow along.