Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarmat89
Bilingual children do not learn their language in schools.
Maori is not a second language for the NZ population; it is a foreign language for them (or a heritage one for the 15% maori minority). The primary school can't even teach foreign language to A1 level reliably; and A1 is nothing, especially for children.
As a bonus, try to guess how many guided learning hours it takes to teach a child color names in a foreign language.
|
The primary beneficiaries of teaching indigenous languages to settler children are the indigenous people. Assimilation of indigenous people onto the settler cultures has failed miserably just about everywhere it has been tried - so it's time for something new.
In the few schools where an Australian indigenous language is taught there are usually kids in the school who use it as their first language, and it is usually (always ??) 'taught' by the indigenous people who 'own' the language, within the context of sharing their specific culture. How do we teach infants to speak their mother tongue - by telling them stories.
I imagine something similar is being done in NZ, having only one Māori language should make their objective feasible. There are dozens of distinct indigenous languages in Australia (jealously guarded by their owners), there used to be hundreds, so it would be hard for Australia to have a similar objective language wise, but the stories share common elements across groups… e.g. the Seven Sisters songline inspired by the Pleiades constellation.
BR