Maori Language Week

Monday 9 September to Sunday 15 September saw New Zealand celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Maori Language Week). This occurs every year, with the focus being to encourage the use and understanding of Te Reo Maori right throughout New Zealand.

This year, the focus was for people to give it a go. No matter the pronunciation, people were encouraged to try the language, and applauded for their use of it.

IPL took part in recognising and celebrating Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori with daily lessons distributed to all staff. These lessons ranged from basic greetings, introductions and asking after the wellbeing of each other, through to using various Maori words in every day New Zealand English conversation.

The lessons also gave the phonetic way to correctly pronounce the various Maori words, which staff found helpful, and made them more confident to give Te Reo Maori a try.

Support for the staff was given in the way of Cory Abrahams from Refining New Zealand, and Sarah Raniera and Denese Gallagher from IPL.

To round off the week, the staff were given a fun crossword puzzle where the clues were presented in New Zealand English, and the answers were to be translated into Te Reo Maori. The words and phrases within the crossword were all taken from what was contained within the lessons from throughout the week, which cemented the lessons, and provided a fun and educational way to embrace the language.

Finally, each lesson was rounded out by a whakatauki, which is a Maori proverb that provides inspiration through the deeper meaning within the whakatauki. Many of these focused on achieving together as a team, and our values of our people being the most important part of IPL.