Eamon Sloan

  Language Wars – New Zealand style The first posting to this blog will focus on the race and language issue that is bedevilling New Zealand. There are other posts in progress. Too often the knee-jerk reaction to any criticism of Maori and/or Non-Maori is that the critic is a racist. We certainly have a racial divide in New Zealand which has been growing for all manner of reasons.  To me language rates well up the scale in causing division and feeds into and off many other issues. We have a movement afoot, and accelerating at present, which is seeking to radically re-engineer the English language as it is written and spoken in New Zealand (NZ English or NZE). Where is the evidence? It is all around us on many fronts. Start with a simple issue - what I call the naming and renaming juggernaut. New Zealand is constantly being referred to as Aotearoa. Institutions and place names are being given Maori names which have no relevance whatever to the NZE name. The New Zealand Tr...