TE MOANA O REO | OCEAN OF LANGUAGES

Edited by Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana
published by The Cuba Press

Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages launched in February/ March with seven readings around Aotearoa: Auckland, Hamilton, Kerikeri, Wellington, Carterton, Dunedin & Christchurch. This sparkling new collection brings more than 40 languages together, story by story, highlighting the beautifully complex realities of Aotearoa’s multicultural and multilingual society. Including prose poems, microfictions and creative nonfictions, plus 12 essays from language practitioners and experts, Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages holds words to the light, examining, contemplating and declaring who we are. This is a 21st-century view of Aotearoa, a taonga for our world.

From the intro:

We live in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual society. We are a country made up of Pākehā, Māori, Pasifika and Asian cultures. Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Cook Island Māori, Mandarin and Cantonese are part of our histories. Besides those, there are many other languages spoken in this country – Hindi, Tagalog, French, German, Afrikaans, Korean, Japanese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Arabic, Italian, Thai, Tamil, Dutch, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Persian, Indonesian, Marathi, Serbo-Croatian, Telugu, Sinhala, Belarusian, Ukrainian.

In the twenty-first century, we navigate an ocean of languages in Aotearoa.

Below are a handful of excerpts from the collection. Plus excellent words from Witi Ihimaera, Emma Neale and Chris Tse, and excerpted remarks from the editors and the publisher, Mary McCallum.

The book can be found at The Cuba Press, here.

Stories from the anthology

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Te reo Māori Deutsch | German 日本語 | Japanese

In the 1950s and 60s, I’d happily recite Latin responses at Catholic Mass. Having Japanese and German daughters-in-law, two bilingual sons and five bilingual mokopuna has only deepened my lifelong fascination for other languages.

Language as species

From my te reo dictionary: Ki te tirohanga Māori he ika te poraka – from a Māori worldview, frogs are classified as fish. Like me. A fish out of water, happily stranded in a garden in Germany, nearby, Blumen am Sommerende by the Fischteich. The pigeons, die Tauben; in the nearby Taubenhaus, fliegen auf, with a sudden clangour of wings. There is laughter, beer, and my youngest son translating the Deutsch his in-laws speak. We easily recognise the word Prost. Cheers! Good health. They pour us eggnog – Eierlikör. Nearby, on a sixteenth-century church steeple, the resident stork. Der Storch. Or in Japan, my oldest son, musoko, translating the language his in-laws speak. Yoku neta? Did we sleep well? And: kanpai, as we all raise a glass of saki. Cheers! Good health. In the garden, pumpkins, sweet potato, mushrooms, a kiwifruit vine and raspberries – razuberi. As well, a family shrine, centuries-old and moon-pale. My son points out a green frog; kaeru midoriiro. It sits, small, unmoving, blissfully unaware that it could also be a fish.

Renee Liang

中文 | Chinese 广东话| Cantonese

我的父母於1972年從香港移民至新西蘭 (New Zealand)

(奧特羅亞 Aotearoa). 我在一年後的春天降臨。重拾粵語作為身份與母語的旅程，或許對我而言並不陌生。在我學會言語之前，粵語早已深植心田，如根扎土。雖然我曾因文盲與幼稚語法而感到羞愧，但成年之後，使用它卻為我帶來了無盡的聯繫與豐富的滋養。

My parents emigrated to Aotearoa from Hong Kong in 1972; I was born a year later. My journey towards reclaiming Cantonese as identity and mother tongue may be familiar. Cantonese seeded deep in my brain before I could talk. While I’m still ashamed of illiteracy and toddler grammar, using it as an adult brings me such connection and richness.

Embrace

At three, English coursed through my arteries, overwhelming my native Cantonese. My father tried to rescue me, begging me to breathe: tou hei! I refused. I was already underwater, growing new gills. Now, at fifty, I am the one holding my father afloat as his memories drain. He spoke four languages, now he’s lost the German and is starting to lose his English. So, I use my infant Cantonese. Gnor lei. Lei la? I come, come on. I nourish him with tiny breaths: chor dai? sic faan. Sit, eat. I encourage him as he takes unsteady steps, repeating the words I hear my mother use. Maan maan lei, take it slowly. The words puff out of surprised alveoli. Pockets of language, the words diffusing into me, hitting my bloodstream like oxygen, travelling to my neurons. Pathways activating that I didn’t know were still there. My father smiles. He knew all along. Our breaths rise, become clouds. Embrace.

Gina Cole

VakaViji | Fijian (Lauan dialect)

Au a dau vosa vakaPalagi kau kila vakalailai eso a vosa vakaViji niu se tubu cake jiko. Au mai vulica a vosa vakaMaori e Univesiti. Ena gauni i esa toso jiko a qou vuli vosa vakaMaori se te reo Māori e Te Wananga o Aotearoa kau vuli vosa vakaViji ena onalaine.

I grew up speaking English, some Fijian and some te reo Māori at university. I am now learning te reo Māori at Te Wananga o Aotearoa and Fijian online.

Na suluwanu e sega ni mate rawa

E pamutakina a serei luvena yalewa ko Mere me tovolea me vakabulai kea, ia e sa leqa ko Gade ni sa sega ni drodro rawa a ona dra. Sa dua a ka a mosi ni utoi Mere kei na ona sa luluvu. E sa mai cegu yani a ona sasaga ni sa kauta a bula nei Gade a waitui. E koto tu a yagoi Gade e na nuku katakata kei na todra ni siga e na yasa ni dua na suluwanu dui roka. Rai cake ko Mere, ka raica na sua i gelegele ni drau ni niu. A gauna cava beka e a tekivu me taleitakina ko Gade a waitui? E keveti luvena ko Gade ka kauti kea yani ki na drua e na bati ni wai, ka voce yani ki wasawasa. Vakayasava a boto ni waqa ka sarava na drodro yani ni wai. Lutudromu na drua ka sereki rau yani ki wasawasa. E rau lakova yani a kedra maliwa a suluwanu e vaka me ra meke tu ka ra veiciriyaki cake mai ki dela ni wai.

Immortal Deepstaria

Mere pumped her daughter’s chest, trying to resuscitate her. But Gade’s blood stilled in her veins. Heartsick and tearful, Mere gave up. The waitui had taken Gade. Her blueing body lay on hot sand near a sunbaked opalescent jellyfish. Mere looked up to the swaying coconut fronds. When did Gade’s love of the waitui begin? She lifted Gade into the drua at the water’s edge, paddled out to sea, punctured the hull and watched the water rush in. The drua foundered, delivering them both into the waitui. They fell together among schools of pulsing Deepstaria jellyfish, taking breath in luminous dance.

Anna Foster

Українською | Ukrainian

Я довго жила на роздоріжжі двох мов – української (мови моєї батьківщини) та російської (мови моїх батьків). Тепер передімною новий шлях – мова англійська.

For a long time, I used to live at the crossroads of two languages – Ukrainian (the language of my homeland) and Russian (the language of my parents). Now a new path is waiting ahead – English.

Попугай

Жил один попугай, который мог ответить на все вопросы. Местные в Хиккадуве рассказали мне о его болтовне.

Как твои дела, бро? – спросил я попугая.

Хорошо, сэр, веррри гуд.

А как мои дела, бро?

Лучше не спрашивайте, сэр. Лучше и не спрашивайте. Вы разговариваете с попугаем в пустой забегаловке в то время, как официантка вытирает столы

и переворачивает

пластиковые

стулья.

Parrot

There was a parrot who could answer everything. Locals at the Hikkaduwa told me of his twaddle.

How are you doing, man? I questioned the parrot.

Good, sir, verrry good.

And how I’m doing, man?

You better not ask, sir. You better not ask. You are talking to the parrot in the empty shack while the waitress is cleaning tables and putting plastic chairs.

side

down

Karlo Mila

Lea Fakatonga | Tongan

I have been raised among multiple and overlapping Moana cultures. It is natural for me to use many of our indigenous words in my poetry as they shape the way I think and feel. So much of my work pushes English very hard to try to explain what these beautiful words have to say about the world.

What Some of Our Words Mean

We come from people who sang to the gods and then listened through the openings in the objects waiting for a reply. We come from people who can travel between this shore and those ones.

[vaka / waka]

Even now there are blood vessels who can anchor in, the other world. Heavyweights. Who can speak, the tongued language of the passed. Hold a whole community safe with their gravitas, on choppy water. Oracle us back to the future.

[taula / taura]

We who believe that even without the biological obvious of DNA in our bodies, our ancestors are always within us, waiting to be received, waiting to be breathed through us, into the world of light.

[tūpuna]

We will spend a lifetime trying to remember who we are, and live what that means.

The departed, fresh on our faces. The next breath in a long line of who has been the making of us. The chosen ones who connect the future to the past. The chosen ones who create everything that is possible for those who will come.

[mokopuna]

A version of this piece was published previously in the Schools Programme of the Auckland Writers Festival.

In the words of Witi, Emma and Chris…

Revel in the many foam-tossed stories within, dive deep, follow their taniwha sounds, play in this ocean of languages.

– Witi Ihimaera

A key, a needle, a watch-cog, a splinter, a flea with a wicked bite, a bead of ink that stains paper, a seed that contains the code for the full tree: our world is composed of, supported by and altered by tiny things. Micros, too, have this potency: tiny, but intoxicating; little, but transformative; small, but crammed with life. This polyphonic, polyglot collection reminds us that we underestimate the small at a cost: the cost of joy and wisdom.

– Emma Neale

The best part of learning a new language is having how you see the world challenged, adding new layers of appreciation to ‘universal’ experiences. This unique collection replicates that feeling by giving us a multi-faceted glimpse at the many ways we read and speak the world into being in Aotearoa. Although language is the common thread that binds these pieces together, the range of stories contained is as broad as the languages represented, each a surprising burst of colour and sound.

– Chris Tse

Launch notes, excerpted

Karakia shared by Vaughan Rapatahana

E te Atua kua ruia nei
O purapura pai.
Homai e koe he ngākau hou
Kia tupu ake ai.

E Ihu kaua a tukua
Kia whakangaromia.
Me whakatupu ake ia
Kia kitea ai ngā hua.

Āke ake ake
Āmine.

From Michelle Elvy

This project began when we celebrated 10 years of National Flash Fiction Day in 2022. That year, we invited 10 writers to share a microfiction in their languages: Ivy Alvarez, Vera Dong, David Eggleton, Teoti Jardine, Sile Mannion, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Piet Nieuwland, Mikaela Nyman, Cristina Schumacher and Neema Singh. Their 10 stories were shared in a multi-lingual Phantom Billstickers series, and are included in this book.

From there, we expanded the project; it was three years in the making and involved a vast team of contributors, editors, advisors, translators and language experts. The collection includes 94 stories and 12 essays. It is of the most complex anthologies I’ve edited.

Vaughan and I set out to address the question ‘why’ in our intro: Why a new collection of micros? Why now? Why a book of microfictions and creative nonfiction written in different languages?

I’ll add here that for me personally, it is an even more important book against the backdrop of the start of 2025. I am jotting this note from the US, where the current regime has so dramatically turned against equality and human rights, with Trump just this week signing an executive order making English the official language of the United States – for the first time ever in the country’s entire history, thus furthering a frightening and discriminatory agenda.

This book is something to be proud of. Stories and languages represent who we are. This book invites people to come together and sing out. Congratulations to you all!

From Mary McCallum, publisher

We are deeply proud of this provocative and beautiful book, Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, edited by Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana, with cover image by Reihana Robinson, cover design by Tara Malone and interior typesetting and design by Paul Stewart.

It’s a mean feat to typeset a book with over 40 languages in it, using many different alphabets, syllabaries and logographies! We’ve learnt so much. For a start, that you need a special font. Paul discovered Noto Serif: billed as supporting 776 different languages. Some it didn’t, such as Bengali, but Paul looked elsewhere for those and found a solution.

The work of nearly 100 authors is the pages of this book. These are micro stories – a more compressed version of flash fiction – and each one is packed with so much about the author, their whānau, their culture and of course their language. It is a gift to the people of Aotearoa from editors Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana, who have pushed out the boat for this one – imagine managing nearly 100 authors! Te Moana o Reo is a taonga. And we hope it will have many readers.