How hard can it be? LEARNING A LANGUAGE

WHEN JAI BREITNAUER AND HER FAMILY MOVED ABROAD THEY FOUND GAINING THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE ALSO CHANGED THE WAY THEY LIVED THEIR LIVES

‘hotoke’ winter ‘puna’ spring ‘raumati’ summer ‘ka pai’ good ‘kia ora’ hello ‘kaimoana’ seafood When our family were given the chance to learn te reo Māori, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand, via our kids’ school in Auckland, we thought it would be fun. It’s an unusual language for Europeans, but its words are used daily in New Zealand; ‘ka pai’ meaning OK or good, or ‘kia ora’, the famous catch-all for hello. We also felt it our duty – like Welsh, the language had been dying but was enjoying a resurgence and we wanted to support it. We knew that learning a language benefits mental and emotional wellbeing as well, with studies showing it can help prevent Alzheimer’s, among other things. “The process of language learning improves neural activities in the area of…

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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2020

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