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The work to teach Maori Te Reo on the world’s largest language app, Duolingo, started 10 years ago, but is far from over.
Duolingo has more than 300 million users worldwide, learning 36 languages, including two fictional languages, Klingon de Star trek and high valyrian game of Thrones. The most popular course on the app, English for Spanish Speakers, has nearly 30 million people currently learning the language.
The enormous reach and pioneering technology of Duolingo are also expected to help strengthen the Maori tea. At least, that’s the dream of Kaikohe’s teacher, Moko Tepania. He is part of a team of 10 dedicated reo teachers and speakers who volunteer their time to create a course to teach the English-speaking world how to Maori kōrero.
Tepania says the Duolingo course will not be a silver bullet. It also comes with its own challenges around tikanga and digital rangatiratanga.
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The sovereignty of digital data has become a hot topic for Maori and other indigenous peoples, with concerns about how foreign companies use or claim ownership of indigenous knowledge and data. Tepania says Duolingo Māori volunteers have spoken with their counterparts in Hawaii for advice on how to put their language on the American app.
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Far North District Counselor and Reo Teacher, Moko Tepania, is working with Duolingo to teach Reo on the app.
“There are others who speak to you and are afraid of what to put ancestral knowledge in a foreign kete. What will that mean for the manna of the language? Will we continue to maintain the manna of the language if we wanted to take it off the platform? “
Tepania says she believes in the app, after learning some basic conversational Spanish 10 years ago. At that time, he contacted Duolingo to suggest a Maori tea course.
Then, in early 2020, work began to create the Te reo Māori course. Myra Awodey, a member of the US-based Duolingo community engagement staff, told RNZ that she hoped to have a Maori course by the end of the year. The platform had been working to introduce more indigenous language courses, having completed Irish Gaelic, Hawaiian, and Native American Navajo.
But it depends on volunteers.
The team of about 10 inmate speakers, some living abroad, have spent the year making a syllabus that they will then need to upload into the system. This is just the beginning. Courses like Spanish have seen more than a dozen updates, with new lessons added to improve student fluency.
It is an exciting project for the group that works to teach you reo to the world.
“I want this to be another vehicle that can teach our language to people … but we all have another mahi to make,” says Tepania.
“I’m looking forward to seeing this eventually online. This mahi, has never wavered for 10 years, that I first applied for an incubator to reo Maori. “
The “incubator” is the back door of Duolingo, where every lesson and course begins. Great courses, like Hindi, are labeled stage three “beta graduates”, but te reo Māori remains at stage one. According to Duolingo, it will graduate to beta at the end of February 2021.
