There’s a growing number of local sport broadcasters embracing te reo Māori, following the footsteps of Māori pioneers who dared to speak it on-air when few did.
Veteran rugby commentator Tony Johnson is the voice behind some of New Zealand rugby’s greatest moments, and he’s been using his platform to help normalise te reo Māori in homes.
“If you talk about the forwards rolling up their sleeves, doing the mahi, or the backs having a little kōrero before the line up takes place… hopefully, that’s doing a little bit to help those words become part of everyday usage in Aotearoa.”
Commentator Tony Johnson vows never to back down from Te Reo Māori use – Watch on TVNZ+
For Johnson, it’s a privilege to do what he does as a job, and with privilege comes great responsibility.
“I feel there’s a responsibility to honour the language, to honour people’s names, to honour place names – so that is really important.
“It’s a professional thing but it’s also a personal thing with me because I’m fortunate to have been influenced by some really good people in my time who have helped me and inspired me, and I want to do the right thing by them, by pronouncing names [and] places.”
He credits his former schoolteacher and XV coach from Queen Charlotte College, the late Monte Ohia, on instilling the importance of a name and getting the pronunciation right.
“I remember the place that we were talking about – we were due to go and have a game in what we used to call ‘Kai-KORRA’. You gotta remember, this was back in the ’70s where mispronunciation of names, particularly place names, was widespread, it was common, and it was terrible.
“So we were talking about going off and playing this game in Kai-KORRA and Monte said ‘it’s actually, Kaikōura’ – Kai-kō-ura – and he explained it was to do with this delicacy that they fish out of the water down there.”
The lesson stuck with him, said Johnson, and once he left school and started his career in broadcasting, he wanted to do his best by the language in honour of Ohia who had been “a great influence” on him at school.
‘You want to give mana to the names’
Te reo Māori has since become the norm on New Zealand screens.
Reo commentator Tūmamao Harawira said his first commentating gig was with Whakaata Māori’s Te Reo channel during the Rugby World Cup in 2011. He’s now commentating for Sky Sport who has been offering te reo Māori commentary since 2019, after first piloting the initiative in 2000.
He said it can be quite daunting trying to give a concise explanation of rugby in te reo, and commentating in Māori isn’t without its own language challenges too.
“There’s a whole lot of people who are listening, mainly the high fluency speakers, and so they’re critiquing your reo, they’re critiquing your grammar, making sure that your ‘i’ and your ‘ki’ are in the right place, but after a while it starts to become a whole lot natural and you can give your character and your unique perspective in terms of sport.”
But most daunting of all is getting the pronunciation of foreign players’ names right, he said.
“Because here in Aotearoa we like to challenge people that don’t pronounce te reo Māori names properly, but when the shoe’s on the other foot it’s very difficult.”
He said Argentinian names and Fijian surnames he finds particularly tricky, but a lot of countries have the same vowel sounds as te reo Māori which makes things a bit easier.
“You want to give mana to the names. We speak about giving mana to te reo Māori names here in New Zealand and we can’t be hypocritical about pronouncing other countries’ names incorrectly, so the onus is particularly on te reo Māori commentary to get those names right.
“We don’t get it right all the time, it’s very difficult, but if we want to talk the talk then we’ve got to walk the walk.”
‘It’s about respect’
Veteran broadcaster Hemana Waaka’s first te reo commentating gig was in 1988 working for Aotearoa Radio.
A self-proclaimed rugby league fanatic, he said he knew some people “on the board” and approached them about commentating for the radio. He recalls going to Carlaw Park, Auckland, and having to walk across the building’s rooftop to “get into” the media box on a wet and rainy day, carrying all his gears.
That was the start of his long and illustrious career, adapting to commentating all sorts of sports.
Now in his late seventies, he’s still going strong.
“It’s a passion of mine. As long as I’m sitting behind there, you put some headphones in my ear, I’m ready to rock and roll.”
He remembers a time when Māori names were often butchered by local broadcasters.
“It used to hurt me and my ears,” he said. “So what I used to do to my listeners out there… I used to tell them to turn the English commentary down on TV and listen to radio, the audio of my commentary to accommodate that, and they were able to follow the game through that message.”
It still happens, he said, but this time by Australian counterparts in the National Rugby League.
“You know how we have the NRL All Stars? One thing that really, really disappointed me was the names that were broadcast by the Aussie commentators, and you don’t know who they are because… they don’t do their homework and pronounce the names properly.”
Waaka is a firm believer of correct pronunciation regardless of language. He was preparing to commentate the All Blacks v South Africa test match, the hardest game he was ever going to commentate, he said.
“You know why? It’s in South African language, and there’s thirteen different mita o te reo (dialects) they have in South Africa, and of those thirteen different languages, five of them are in the team. So, this morning I’ve been trying to memorise the names.”
It was about respect, he said.
“For me, I would be very, very disappointed if people tried to do commentary and they don’t know the Māori names. Pronounce it properly, nē?”
He adds: “We’re not asking them to learn the language, it’s only in your heart if you want to learn the language, then you learn it, but it’s respect for our language that they do it.”
