image credit: National Centre of Literacy and Numeracy for Adults

Click here to listen to Maori scholar Margie Hohepa speaking about Maori language acquisition and identity

(left click to listen, right click and ‘save target as’ to download)

See below for a transcript of this interview:

Margie: …first language, English speaker, and her husband is the bilingual, you know, speaker and she talked about their needing to think about having a, what she described as having a “CAS to go with the LAS” so you have the language acquisition system, (LAS) whatever you want to call, that but you’ve also got a cultural acquisition system (CAS) and the most ideal form, you know, most ideal situation is they are so intertwined they cannot come apart. But when you’ve been through experiences of colonization that have been about language removal they have come apart. So ya, so, and that’s our reality and so like, there is no blame, no shame, no you know, and so that saying, so I guess that is saying that um, we have to believe that you can still be culturally who you are even if you are in a situation where you develop, redeveloping language because otherwise we cease to exist after what we’ve been through, process of colonization which has been about de-languaging so yea, that’s sort of. ..

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