The cost of living crisis. Impossible house prices. Roadworks. So-called “rat runners” on State Highway 2.
Of all these issues covered in local news stories in recent weeks, none have sparked quite the flurry of feedback as the prospect of bilingual road signs.
Isn’t it interesting what provokes the most outrage in some people?
I returned to work on Sunday to find my email inbox inundated with emails mostly from people expressing upset that Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency would even consider having both English and te reo Māori on road signs.
Open up the latest news from Bay of Plenty
Get daily Bay of Plenty headlines straight to your inbox.
The agency is consulting on a He Tohu Hurarahi Māori bilingual traffic signs programme, which aims to increase the use of te reo Māori on traffic signs. If successful, bilingual signs would be used when a sign is replaced or introduced on the transport network.
It would apply to a package of 94 destination signs, public and active transport signs, walking and cycling signs, general advisory and warning signs, plus motorway and expressway signs.
The emails followed my coverage of a meeting in Tauranga last week where National Party transport spokesman Simeon Brown said he felt road signs should be in English only because “we all speak English”.
Brown’s views were applauded in that meeting. Good for him. Let’s not forget this is also an election year - and, in my view, it seems nothing winds some people up more than the prospect of moves to improve racial harmony, judging from the emails I received.
National transport spokesman Simeon Brown speaking at a transport meeting in Bethlehem. Photo / Alex Cairns
Like NZ sign language, te reo Māori is an official New Zealand language and has a special status. Where is this same upset when we have sign language interpreters standing alongside political leaders making important announcements?
As far as I can tell there is - quite rightly - none.
I am also not convinced that having te reo Māori on road signs with English would be “more confusing”, as Brown put it.
We already have quite a few bilingual signs in Aoetaroa New Zealand. The transport agency started rolling out school signs that also display the translation kura in 2022, with one of the first being installed in Rotorua.
Both te reo Māori and English also feature on the entry signs to many towns and cities, Rotorua is, again, an example. “Welcome to Rotorua” it says on one side of the road, with “Nau Mai ki Rotorua” on the other. I’ve never heard of anyone being confused by this arrangement.
This is not just a New Zealand thing. Wales and Scotland have had bilingual signs for years. If anyone should be concerned about confusion, surely it’d be anyone visiting Wales. The word for road in the native tongue is ffordd,while roundabout is cylchfan. Non-Welsh speakers such as myself would have a tough time pronouncing such words, let alone understanding what they mean. But I’ve never seen the same upset over there as here.
More people still would probably never notice them, just as they have probably never noticed the examples of te reo Māori already gracing our country’s roads.
This is the kind of policy, in my view, that will help people who are interested in or care about te reo and will have little impact on anyone else.
If having bilingual road signs helps promote te reo, a language native and unique to this beautiful country of ours, then I’m all for it.
