Sign language radio ad.

[Bryan]

Heard it this morning. Tells us that we have three official languages - Te Reo, English and Sign. I don't object to the ad as such but I do draw the line that Te Reo takes pride of place as first! Picky I know but if we wont to keep the Country we all grew up in we have a fight on our hands. This new ideal of change to what we knew, to placate the minority, is going to create a real storm in the future.

[1101]

I never thought of it that way.
Why isnt the most used official language , being used as the primary language , allways .

Why change govt dept names to something that 90% of us dont understand (Maori) . Even most Maori cant speak Maori .
Why arnt govt depts renamed to sign language instead of maori ? Sign also an official language .

[Lurking]

Helen CLARK is part of the UN and may have had something to do with it. Typical UN tho, pick on the small nations first. China, Russia and US are far toooo big to pick on.

Must say tho, Canada's Indian population are getting some say in matters as the nations 1st people.

There were others' here before Maori arrived, but, I suppose most of them were eaten and don't have any say in the matter. Those whitey bones in caves up in Tane's forest could give us some DNA on who they were, some say they were Viking, but that seems too far to travel in their long boats.

Father could speak quite a bit of Maori, don't know whether he could speak his mother's German language, and her mother couldn't speak a word of English, so Grandma had to translate everything to us 6 grand children.

lurking.

[paulw]

I believe that English is not an official language in NZ . https://www.change.org/p/jacinda-ard...of-new-zealand

[piroska]

if we wont to keep the Country we all grew up in we have a fight on our hands.

Keep it from what? Fight who? And why?

Maori grew up here too, and their ancestors were here before others.

[Roscoe]

There were a couple of deaf boys at the hostel where I went to school in the late 50s. They did not use sign languague to communicate between themselves or us. Besides none of us would have known sign languague. These two boys would lip read and although they sounded a bit strange, they could talk and could make themselves easily understood.

Lip reading was very useful. At the hostel we did our homework in the library and we were not allowed to talk, but we were able to talk to the deaf boys as we would lip read across the room. The prefect in charge was doing his homework as well so he did not notice. That was good. We helped each other with our homework.

[Paul.Cov]

Interesting... take the PC BS to it's extremes, and you have a place like the USA with millions of African Americans who were originally ripped from their homes and their lands to become slaves in a foreign land. Practically none of them now will be able to speak a single word of their original dialect, but the whole PC BS brigade would probably deem it a requirement to cater to them in their historical native tongue as well.

As for the true Native Americans (Indians), much like Maori, I'm not aware of them having had any written words or alphabet. They were at the level of drawing images, so much like Aussie Aborigine or somewhere behind ancient Egyptians, whose heiroglyphs at least could convey something more complex than 'we hunt buffalo here'.

[B.M.]

Interesting... take the PC BS to it's extremes, and you have a place like the USA with millions of African Americans who were originally ripped from their homes and their lands to become slaves in a foreign land. Practically none of them now will be able to speak a single word of their original dialect, but the whole PC BS brigade would probably deem it a requirement to cater to them in their historical native tongue as well.

As for the true Native Americans (Indians), much like Maori, I'm not aware of them having had any written words or alphabet. They were at the level of drawing images, so much like Aussie Aborigine or somewhere behind ancient Egyptians, whose heiroglyphs at least could convey something more complex than 'we hunt buffalo here'.

Here's one for you Paul.

Put Kaikawe rererangi into a Maori - English translator and you will find it is "Aircraft Carrier".

Now how did they know that.

[R2x1]

Here's one for you Paul.

Put Kaikawe rererangi into a Maori - English translator and you will find it is "Aircraft Carrier".

Now how did they know that.

Obviously they looked it up . . . . .