None of my hoanoho (housemates) or immediate hoamahi (workmates) have any fluency in Te Reo Māori, so regular kōrero Māori is pretty challenging.

Here’s what I’m doing at the moment:

I send at least one text message in Māori each day. I have four people I can text.
I always have at least one coffee date booked with one of these four people and we try and arrange it in Māori, and kōrero Māori for a little bit when we meet.

Here’s what I think my next steps are:

Learn and use on new passive command I can use with my kids each week.
Have a regular weekly 10 minute slot for kōrero Māori at work with the handful of people learning Te Reo this year.

Some other thoughts on what I can do to raise the temperature of the kōrero Māori water I swim in.

Put up a cheat sheet of encouraging phrases at work for my team to use for each other. Encouragement and praise must be in Māori first.
Put up a cheat sheet of email greetings and sign offs at work and use them in all our emails.

The Reo Project | Day 181

Welcome to my little corner of the internet.

I believe that place matters.

Our connection to whatever little corner of the planet we find ourselves in, or choose to place ourselves on, matters.

I'm relentlessly curious and continually learning.

My interests are scattered across topics including property, strategy, acoustics, psychology, theology, systems theory, quantum physics and leadership. I read, listen, watch, and learn about whatever grabs my attention in the moment.

This is a learning experiment.

I come here to try to make sense of something I’ve come across, by writing about it.

I’m immersing myself in a new language.

I’m learning to speak Te Reo Māori, the language of the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand and one of our official languages. After spending 2020 studying, I’m figuring out how to keep the journey going outside the classroom.

You’re welcome to follow along.