A government official in New Zealand has devised a new Maori-based glossary to replace some of the English words used by the government for talking about mental health, disability, and addiction. For example, he proposes replacing the word autism with takiwatanga, which translates as “in his or her own time or space.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “New Maori Words”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Maori is the native language of New Zealand’s original Polynesian inhabitants.
And it was in the headlines recently because a government official there who speaks Maori has devised a manual for the government that adds dozens of new words and phrases to the Maori vocabulary for talking about issues involving mental health, disability, and addiction.
There’s a Maori proverb, in fact, that he quotes that translates as words have great power.
And what he did was to talk with people in the disabled community there, and he was trying to develop variants from the words that they use, because sometimes they use English words too.
And he found some of those English terms condescending.
For example, the word that’s getting the most attention in this glossary is the term for autism, which is takiwatanga, which literally translates as his or her own time and space.
Isn’t that interesting?
Is that his new word or the old existing word?
It’s the new word that he’s proposing that people use for people with autism, someone with his or her own time or space.
And a good description, right?
It is.
I mean, the word autism itself goes back to a Greek word that means self.
But I thought that that was a really interesting way to approach talking about mental health, was to create words from the Maori language that more specifically describe what they’re dealing with.
And it sounds like he’s in a position to make them stick, right?
As a government official, he can put them in official documents and they can begin to be used in all the materials.
Yes, yes.
And the idea behind it was to translate words and phrases that might carry stigma and make them more positive and make them more, how do they put it, recognizing humanity, hope, and personal dignity.
That’s a great effort.
Yeah.
I think so.
That sounds like the kind of thing we can all do, right?
Right.
Seek the positive synonym over the negative one, right?
Yeah.
Well, and recognize that what we’re talking about is people.
Not abstract concepts, not dollar signs.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It goes back to framing.
How you frame a situation affects all subsequent conversations about that situation.
Yeah.
And the fact that there’s just such a great diversity among us, you know?
Well, it sounds like I need to check my Maori dictionary and maybe put some Post-it notes in there with the new word.
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