Ngā Pepeha a Ngā Tūpuna
by Ross Calman
It can be easy to think we’ve always had written language. But our ability to speak came long before our ability to write. People have been around for almost a million years, yet we’ve only had writing for the last five thousand. Within Māori culture, that time is even less: te reo Māori was first written around two hundred years ago. Before then, spoken language was the main way Māori communicated their knowledge and ideas and passed them on to the next generation.
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