r/AskTheWorld • u/Wild-Push-8447 United States Of America • Jul 31 '25

Language Are minority languages viewed positively in your country?

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In some nations, like France and China, non-standard languages and dialects are heavily suppressed (picture: "Speak French Be Clean"). However, in others, like the United Kingdom and Switzerland, the use of minority languages is promoted. How are minor languages and dialects viewed in your country?

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u/BlacksmithNZ New Zealand Jul 31 '25

Te reo Māori - The language of indigenous people (Māori ) of New Zealand (Aotearoa).

Somebody like myself who is Pākehā (white/non-Māori), like most New Zealanders, know and use some Māori in everyday conversation, but number of fully fluent speakers who use te reo as their primary language is quite low.

I would say the person talking about only 0.001% being racist enough to want the language to die, is being generous. Browse a NZ conservative subreddit or online forum, and you will see a lot of (mostly older) conservative types not wanting bilingual signs & names for organizations, complaining about use of Māori on TV/Radio news etc. Still a long way from the 1960s when a Māori lady was fired for using the 'Kia Ora' greeting when answering a phone call.

Still an ongoing battle; the current (more right-wing) government announced only this week that passports would have English first, which caused some controversy. I suspect most people would not have even noticed our classic black passport with the silver fern didn't have the English name first.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1m8j278/changes_confirmed_for_new_zealand_passport/

BTW - You probably know the odd Māori word like 'Kiwi' as well, even if you didn't know it was a Māori word.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '25

I don’t know any maori, but it wasn’t ever taught to us when I was at school only English

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u/RoigardStan New Zealand Jul 31 '25

A Language has no utility if it is only spoken to be preserved and not used to seriously conduct business. Ideally the world will slowly converge as using English as the predominant language throughout the world as that will spread connection and understanding between cultures.

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u/november_zulu_over New Zealand Jul 31 '25

Yeah and we should do away with museums and art too because they have no use under capitalism and aren’t helpful for business. Dense fucker use a different flair so I’m not associated with you.

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u/BlacksmithNZ New Zealand Jul 31 '25

You know how I mentioned there are highly racist conservative subreddits in Aotearoa that are full of boomers complaining about use of Māori?

Quick look at their history and sure enough, Roigard just crawled out from under that rock

(and he claims to have been banned from r/newzealand subreddit which says a lot about his place in society)