High-profile New Zealand media personalities are refusing to back down from using Maori words in their prime-time broadcasting, despite hundreds of complaints from English speakers who say they feel excluded by the use of the language, also known as Te Reo.
Newshub presenter Kanoa Lloyd, who is of Maori descent, first began introducing Te Reo words to her weather reports in 2015 and immediately received a weekly torrent of complaints and online abuse.
Many listeners said they were unhappy with Lloyd referring to New Zealand by its Te Reo name of Aotearoa, and to the North and South islands by their Te Reo names of Te Ika-a-Maui and Te Waipounamu.
Lloyd defied her critics and has continued using Te Reo words in her job as cohost of The Project NZ.
Her staunch approach to preserving the indigenous language seems to have inspired other broadcasters to follow suit.
Last year, Radio New Zealand journalists began signing off their reports in Te Reo.
TVNZ presenter Jack Tame uses it regularly on his Breakfast show, as does Morning Report presenter Guyon Espiner.
However, the trend has sparked anger among some viewers.
Morning Report has said it receives about half a dozen complaints on an average day.
“Radio New Zealand — the New Zealand equivalent of the BBC — is supposed to be free of political meddling. Yet now it has been hijacked and its hapless staff obliged to dispense their daily dose of Te Reo,” opinion writer Dave Witherow last week wrote in the Otago Daily Times.
“There were just a few words to begin with. Then longer sentences, which have kept on growing, until the keener young grovelers now begin and end their spiels with expansive swatches of a lingo understood by only a minuscule proportion of their audience,” he said.
On Monday night, Lloyd recorded a passionate two-minute video rebuttal to her detractors, saying: “I actually felt a bit sorry for these guys, sorry the world is moving too fast for you my bros. The change has already happened. The Earth isn’t flat, climate change is real, the treaty was signed, we’re speaking Maori.”
Espiner said he received daily messages from New Zealanders telling him to “stop speaking gibberish,” but has committed to normalizing and encouraging the use of Te Reo through his program, which is listened to by nearly 500,000 New Zealanders every day.
“There does seem to be a lot of people who feel that it [Te Reo] threatens them or they don’t want to hear it ... but we’re going full steam ahead,” Espiner said.
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