Eight-year-old’s question leads to Lenovo’s te reo Māori keyboard

Lenovo country manager, Libby Macgregor, at Nga Whare Waatea Marae in Mangere for the launch of the laptop maker's new bilingual keyboard. Photo / Michael Craig

Lenovo country manager Libby Macgregor says the laptop maker’s new bilingual keyboard started with a query from her 8-year-old son.

“Felix was learning te reo Māori as part of the school curriculum. He came home and was playing on my laptop keyboard and he said, ’Mum, why can’t I find the keys on the keyboard to type in te reo Māori?’ It really struck a chord with me and I questioned why didn’t we have that capability. Why is it not as easy as it should be?”

Lenovo's te reo keyboard was inspired by an 8-year-old boy.

On the face of things, it seems a tall order to make any customisation request to a multinational giant: IDC ranked Lenovo the world’s largest computer maker by shipments in the December quarter, ahead of HP, Dell, Apple and Asus. (The Chinese tech giant has grown partly through acquisition; it bought IBM’s ThinkPad business in 2005 and Motorola’s phone division in 2014.)

“Part of it is that I knew it could be done because I’ve been with Lenovo now for 15 years. I’ve worked in other markets so I’ve seen other languages effectively come to life through changing the design of a product. So I knew it could be done,” Macgregor says.

“And I think also the fact that we have a product diversity office and we’re investing heavily in initiatives around inclusivity, so it felt the time was right to champion it.”

The new keyboard features dedicated keys for a version of each vowel with a macron - which in te reo Māori denotes a long vowel sound. Those macrons help you nail your pronunciation, and avoid blunders: keke with short “e”s means cake, for example, while kēkē means armpit.

There are already various methods for generating macrons, including installing the Māori keyboard in Windows then stretching for tilde key before you hit any vowel, opening the Windows Character Map app, a long press on your smartphone’s keyboard (iOS also has a te reo keyboard option) and the good old clumsy Google a word then copy and paste it.

Having physical keys is just faster and simpler.

The new keyboard, developed in partnership with AMD, features on various ThinkPad and Education laptops aimed at schools and universities.

Macgregor sees wider markets ahead.

“We launched initially with education because education is where we’re seeing a lot of change but certainly within government and corporate businesses, we’re seeing a lot of adoption of te reo. Many companies encourage staff to be educated in the language and in everyday life it’s obviously becoming more and more visible to the revitalistation of the re reo language. [It] is something we wanted to play a part in.”

“Digital devices in countries with large English-speaking populations often miss out on products with alternative characters for languages. This results in a digital divide for consumers who do not have a viable solution to use technology the way they want to, impacting their daily use of preferred languages,” Macgregor says.

“Māori is a culture which stays alive predominantly through use of the language. A number of organisations are leading this important kaupapa such as Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori - The Māori Language Commission - Te Puni Kōkiri - Ministry of Māori Development - Whakaata Māori TV and Radio Waatea; however the journey is ongoing.

“Lenovo wants to contribute by enabling Aotearoa’s rangatahi and professional workforce to use te reo Māori with ease in their everyday lives, through the launch of this keyboard.”

Lenovo launched its product diversity office in 2020 to ensure that its solutions are easily accessible, and reflect the diversity needs of its worldwide customer base with a goal to have 75 per cent of all products vetted for inclusion by 2025, Macgregor says.

Lenovo has also done wider work, with increasing investment into the preservation of indigenous cultures through its Lenovo Foundation, which has most recently partnered Motorola with Unesco to conduct further research on the impact and potential of digitising endangered indigenous languages.

Typing a macron on a mobile device

iOS (iPhone, iPad)

• Press and hold a vowel to select the macron version from the displayed menu.
• Alternatively, you can switch iOS’s te reo keyboard (via Settings>General>Keyboard>Add New Keyboard)

Android

The standard language package for most Android devices allows you to press and hold a vowel to select the macron version from the displayed menu. However this does not include ō for some users. A workaround for this is to add te reo Māori for predictive text in any app that uses a keyboard.