KAPAI: Language only one part of Maori identity

Kia ora - welcome to Maori Language Week. Unless you have been hibernating underneath a hot hangi you will know this already so I am not going to fill this column with a list of long Maori sentences that many of us can't move our mouth around, let alone pronounce correctly.
I am always amazed when I hear or read "You don't have a Maori culture if you can't speak the language". So what culture do 70-80 per cent of Maori belong to?
There are a lot of us who are far from fluent and, at best, can only manage pockets of Maori conversation in our korero _ but who walk their talk on the marae and in the Maori community in other ways.
For my two bobs' worth, it is tikanga (obligations) that determines your cultural understanding and that can be easily measured by the unpaid hours spent working on the marae or in the kohanga and local schools. I would love to take on a te reo course and add to my conversational French, Japanese and Indonesian, but it would mean the five community groups and 30 voluntary hours each week I am committed to would have to taiho (halt), so it's a luxury I cannot afford.
Maori Language Week (July 21-27) for me is a good time to reflect on how much or how little Maori is spoken in the home. Here in our whare, our tamariki and my partner are comfortable speaking Maori, so I get a good grounding in te reo and an in-house classroom of cultural correctness.
What I also get is a good growling every time I incorrectly pronounce Maori, usually from my 3-year-old who has never learned incorrect pronunciation _ well, not in Maori, anyway. My counter-korero is to point out to her it is ``ask' not ``arks', ``brought' not ``brung' or ``I have some money' not ``I got a money'.
This and a few frustrated French gestures usually balances the ledger of linguistic latitude taken by dad and daughter. There is much to celebrate about te reo week in Tauranga, and tomorrow Antoine Coffin will give an insight into the meanings of iconic Maori place names. So, if you are like 95 per cent of non-Maori and don't know what Otumoetai or Arataki or any other Maori place name means, then the library at 10.30am is the culturally cool place to be.
What may have been foreign when first spoken on mainstream television and radio is now normal, and it is great kai taringa (food for the ears) when newsreaders and radio announcers greet their audiences in Maori.
There are a few Maori words worth remembering and painting pictures with them some times helps.
``Pohara' means poor or broke, and benzene at the bowser is doing just that to us now that we buy our petrol by the precious spoonful. `
`Pono' means truth and ``tito' means porkies.
``Winitana' means Winston, so when we see a sign saying ``kahore' (NO) we now know the minister of overseas affairs and dodgy donations is telling porkies not pono, tito not truth _ or, as my mate Skippy from Matua says, ``more BS than a Bill Clinton BJ'.
``Kaitiaki' means caretaker and ``taiao' is environment, but EBOP does not mean Environment Bay of Bankrupt as shown by our pohara (broke) kaitiaki of rate payers' 55 per cent shareholding in the Port of Tauranga.
Remember the vote-begging billboards at election time last year proclaiming integrity, accountability, fiscal and fiduciary responsibility? Sounds like a Winitana or Wiremu (Bill) Clinton tito, doesn't it?
Could be a good time for John Cronin, chairman of Taiao Kaitiaki (EBOP) to show some leadership and backbench his broke stockbroker.
Be it a tin of cocoa or ``tena koutou', ``ka kite ano' or car keys in Te Anau _ it's having a go that matters, and if you've got this far in my column you have already come across 50 Maori words.
However we walk our talk, there are many who move their mouth in the right direction but fail to back up their korero with their walk. And that is the challenge for any candidate, councillor, community or culture.
Pai marire _ peace.
broblack@xtra.co.nz