It’s Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and we’re celebrating our teammates who are on their te reo journey — from those who are fluent to the ones just starting out.

We asked our Senior Front-end Developer Sam Muirhead a few questions about his te reo Māori learning journey.

What level of te reo Māori speaker are you?

I'm an intermediate speaker, so I can understand a lot, use most of the common sentence structures and I can usually get across the meaning of what I want to say, even if it's not 100% correct. Basically I've got enough vocabulary to optimistically make things up.

For example, I don't know the word for "immersion blender" but I would give it a go with something like "rakau whakatapahi" (stick for chopping) and some hopeful miming. I've still got a long way to go!

How many years have you been studying?

I did a lot of study in 2017/18, then got too busy for classes, and had a kid, and my reo stagnated for a while. I finally got back into it this year. So, two years of study, over 8 years.

How has learning te reo impacted or helped you in your work?

I'm definitely encouraged to continue because I know that reo Māori is valued by my workmates and our clients. We often implement bilingual strategies for our clients and it's valuable for them to have a developer who understands the te reo content on their site, and can notice and suggest corrections for issues. I've also really enjoyed trying to do some of my mahi in te reo Māori — Awa and Karl, two of my designer colleagues, are both reo speakers so we have Slack threads or Figma comments full of creative translations for things like 'line height' or 'colour contrast'.

Where do you study?

I've done night classes at the community education centre, online with Te Wānanga o Raukawa, and now I'm doing Te Pūtaketanga o te Reo at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. It has been such a valuable experience for me, there's one class per week and 8 noho marae over the course of the year. Each one is an immersive experience both in te reo Māori and te ao Māori: waiata, tikanga, whaikōrero, karakia, mahi toi. He pai rawa atu te akoranga!

What inspired you to start learning?

I had just returned to Aotearoa after 9 years away and was really blown away by the increase in te reo that I was hearing. It was really exciting and inspiring to see this revitalisation of the language after it being oppressed for so long.

What's the biggest challenge/s you've overcoming in your learning?

I've learned other languages to fluency in the past (Spanish, German) so I have a good sense of where I want to get to: being able to express myself naturally, to adapt to different contexts and levels of formality, to support other learners. Thanks to that experience I know how I learn best, and I also know that I'm going to sound pretty silly and screw up constantly, but that's unavoidable. You can't learn a language and look cool doing it!

But it's also trickier: I learned those other languages surrounded by native speakers 24/7. The life of a Pākehā front-end developer in Wellington is hardly an immersive te reo experience by default, so I need to work a little harder and seek out opportunities to practise.

It's also a struggle fitting in time to study alongside work, family and other commitments. It requires a bit of negotiation with my partner and some flexibility in when and where I can study - that might mean doing flashcards while I wait for the kettle to boil, or writing assignments on my phone during my kid's swimming lessons.

Do you have a favourite te reo word or phrase?

Tou tirairaka — "a fantail's tail". It's used to describe a restless person.