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Samoan words and translations including fa'afetai meaning thank you
Common Sāmoan words and their translations. (Image: Archi Banal)

SocietyJuly 12, 2023

A nationwide Sāmoan language course for schools aims to keep the language thriving

Samoan words and translations including fa'afetai meaning thank you
Common Sāmoan words and their translations. (Image: Archi Banal)

With a dearth of Sāmoan teachers in schools, a free online and interactive beginners’ course of the language and culture has made a timely entrance in Aotearoa.

It started two years ago at a barbecue. Lead adviser for Pacific education and engagement at the Ministry of Education (looking after the top half of the South Island) Jason Tiatia was chatting away with head of kaupapa Māori at Education Perfect, Te Rau Winterburn, about how he was looking for something new.

At the time, Tiatia was a Sāmoan language teacher at Ara Institute of Canterbury (now Te Pūkenga) for beginner and intermediate level students. He had been in the role for nearly eight years. Winterburn had an idea for what Tiatia should do next. He suggested creating a Sāmoan language course for Education Perfect. While te reo Māori resources have grown exponentially in the past decade, Sāmoan language resources remain relatively slim, with no staple learning books or immersive courses.

Education Perfect is a behemoth education resource provider in New Zealand. It sells digital learning resources for teachers to use in their classrooms, as well as resources for homeschooling parents. The company is currently used in more than 750 schools in Aotearoa, including 85% of secondary schools. In June, it acquired an Australian mathematics resource company for $40m. Sāmoan is now the first Pacific language course on the Education Perfect platform, sitting alongside 10 other language courses.

Tiatia was interested in creating the resource, but as he started putting together ideas for the course, he was offered a job at the Ministry of Education, which created a direct conflict of interest. So Tiatia passed the project back to Education Perfect and suggested a few experts and Sāmoan language tutors to continue his work.

Samoan dancer
The Sāmoan language course includes a section on siva Sāmoa. (Screenshot)

Education Perfect received funding from the Ministry of Education to create the resource, a free beginner Sāmoan language and culture course available to schools nationwide who register for the course. The National Sāmoan Language Teachers Association (FAGASA) contributed guidance over the language and cultural aspects to the supplementary course, which helps preserve and promote the Sāmoan language for future generations.

The course consists of 30 lessons, which includes content such as the alphabet, days and months, White Sunday and Siva Sāmoa (dance). Being an interactive digital tool for learning the language, students can record themselves practising words and phrases on their devices to build their confidence. For many Sāmoans born in New Zealand, learning the language comes from parents or other elders, and can be a daunting experience. “What’s great about this course is that you learn in a safe space,” Tiatia says. “We aim to make sure the learners are having fun with games and challenges and are carefully nurtured along their journey of learning a language.”

Despite Sāmoan being the third most spoken language in Aotearoa, there is currently a shortage of Sāmoan language teachers in the country. The availability of this course fills a crucial gap, allowing students to explore their heritage and celebrate Fa’ Sāmoa in their learning spaces and at home.

Education Perfect’s New Zealand curriculum specialist Justin Paul sees a great opportunity for many more Pacific languages to follow suit. “UNESCO has classified te reo Māori Kūki ʻĀirani (Cook Islands), te gagana Tokelau, te gagana Tuvalu and Vagahau Niue as endangered or vulnerable, so we hope with the Sāmoan course, it’s the beginning for those languages to be included so that we can support other Pacific communities in preserving their languages,” he says.

High school students showcasing Sāmoan culture on stage. (Photo: Sela Jane Hopgood)

According to data from the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, the percentage of New Zealanders under the age of five who speak their heritage language across all Pacific groups is concerningly low at 16%. There has been a noticeable drop in the number of Pasifika people fluent in their mother tongue over the past 15 years, with a huge decline on lea faka Tonga or Tongan language. Contributors to the decline of Pacific language usage in Aotearoa include the perception that English is the language of success, low perceived value of Pacific languages and low rates of intergenerational transmission.

This new course also offers valuable learning opportunities for teachers, aligning with the cultural competency framework for teachers of Pacific students (Tapasā) and the Action Plan for Pacific Education 2020-2030. While Sāmoan teachers are invaluable for their cultural knowledge and lived experience, the beginner Sāmoan language course can be taught by a qualified teacher of any ethnicity as the resource includes audio pronunciation guides, video demonstrations and English instructions and explanations.

The course launched on Sāmoan language week this year and interested teachers need to register online to access the free course.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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a selection of AT hop key tags on a squiggly pink and blue background
The ultimate public transport accessory (Image: Archi Banal)

SocietyJuly 12, 2023

The curious cult of the AT Hop key tag

a selection of AT hop key tags on a squiggly pink and blue background
The ultimate public transport accessory (Image: Archi Banal)

The lucky Auckland Transport users who’ve gotten their hands on limited edition keyring Hop tags love tagging on and off with something other than a card. So why isn’t there more innovation like this?

Niko Elsen keeps something very useful on his keychain: his Auckland Transport Hop card, in key tag form. “Before the key tags arrived I had so many Hop cards,” says the dad from the Auckland suburb of Waterview. “They all had varying degrees of top-up, scattered across different coat pockets.” His life changed for the better when he got a glossy key tag, permanently attached to the rest of his things, set to an automatic top-up, so he never had to be anxious about being caught without one. 

“While juggling a baby, when wheeling an electric bike through the gates at Britomart, the ability to dangle that little tag onto the beeper is a crucial urbanist tool to help bikes, trains and busy parents seamlessly interconnect.”

a pakeha man and baby on an auckland street looking happy and waving on a sunny day
Niko Elsen’s one-year-old daughter loves playing with the Hop tag on his keyring (Photo: supplied)

Elsen isn’t the only key tag fan. Troy, based on the North Shore, describes having one as being “a bit of a dream, honestly”. The utility was what initially attracted him to the concept. “I liked the idea that all of my transport stuff was in one place – my car keys and my key tag for the bus and ferries, like the Swiss army knife of transport.” 

Troy has a theory that keyrings tell you something important about a person. “A gym card and a bottle opener – you can make some assumptions about that person,” he explains. “If you have your Hop card on your keychain, it’s like saying that buses, trains and ferries are as important as private vehicles.” 

Tragedy struck Troy earlier this year, however, when the thin piece of plastic attaching his Hop card to his keyring broke. “I miss it,” he says. More importantly, he couldn’t find a replacement. His transport Swiss army knife was no more; he’s back to the quotidian navy blue of normal Hop cards. 

In longing for the return of the Hop card key tag, Troy isn’t alone. Periodically pleas for details about where to find key tags appear on the Auckland subreddit, with rumours circulating: “the ferry terminal had a few last month”, “I found one at the dairy in Commercial Bay”, “I bought a few at Newmarket before they disappear again”. One user suggests that “selling them was the best thing AT have ever done” and another says that making key tags “was the only good decision AT has ever made.”

three plastic keytags with cool hand drawn designs by kids
Some of the limited-edition Hop key tags were designed by Auckland children. (Image: Auckland Transport)

The rumours are true, confirms Auckland Transport spokesperson Blake Crayton-Brown. Over 200,000 key tags with Hop chips in them have been produced since they were launched as a promotion in 2018, in seven different designs. The cards were available online from Auckland Transport and at selected retailers; on Auckland’s subreddit, there are reports of stock remaining at several random shops from earlier this year. The only design left is 4,000 of the gold Hop card, for people with Super Gold cards and discounted travel. 

There aren’t any plans to produce more for the moment. “The manufacturing process for the AT Hop key tags is manual and quite intensive. We have experienced some supply chain and manufacturing issues with this product in recent years which has contributed to our decision to not produce any more for the time being,” Crayton-Brown explains. 

Auckland Transport appreciates that the key tags are harder to lose. “Our chief executive has two of them!” Crayton-Brown says. Frustrated travellers searching in vain for a key tag may be galled to discover that key tag hoarding goes to the highest level. 

Bringing the key tags back “could reawaken a bit of love for Auckland Transport”, suggests Troy. “They have that nostalgia factor – part of the attraction of having one was that it felt limited edition, it was really hard to find on the North Shore,” he says. “It’s that nostalgia factor, like Georgie Pie – when you hadn’t had it and you’d heard the good stuff, it made you more keen to try it. Yeah, that makes sense; key tags aren’t a Swiss army knife, they’re a Georgie Pie!”

The question of the key tag raises a bigger issue: why is there so little design innovation in the “cards that have chips in them” sector? For Elsen and Troy, one of the appealing features of the key tag was having one fewer generic plastic card to sort through. The kinds of chips used in Hop cards can be put into anything. In Sweden, people have used chips embedded in their skin to pay for train tickets. Or there’s the (unverified) video of a person with a London Oyster card in their magic wand.

Hop key tags are popular on trains (Image: Supplied by AT)

“I just found cards were inconvenient to hold on the bus,” explains university student Raymond Hu, who has taken a novel approach to his transport card: he’s made it into a ring. He dissolved the Hop card’s plastic in acetone, then fished out the delicate chip and coil. He replaced the coil with his own one, then carefully put the chip into a circular mould and poured resin over it. 

Admittedly, this did take quite a lot of trial and error: Hu says he initially tried to copy the source code onto another chip to save the faff with the acetone, but the security on the cards didn’t allow him to. He had to buy two or three Hop cards which broke in the process of making the ring before he made a functional one. He lost that initial ring and has replaced it with one with glow-in-the-dark resin, which he admits he doesn’t like as much. And, just like with the key tags, there’s a bit of a trick to topping up the ring on a Hop machine, but he’s mastered it now. 

a clear plastic ring on a grey table with a copper coil inside
Raymond Hu’s original Hop card ring (Photo: Supplied)

“Lots of people like it when I use it on the bus, and I’ve had a few offers to buy it – but I’m not going to sell it, because it was way too much work to make.” As delightful as the ring is, the novelty has worn off. “I use it to get to uni every day, so it’s just ordinary, it doesn’t seem magical any more,” he confesses. 

Troy loves the idea of a Hop ring. “Auckland Transport could wheel that out for Valentine’s Day,” he suggests. “But why stop at rings? The sky’s the limit!”

Hu is cynical about Auckland Transport’s ability to innovate. “I think they just buy the hardware as it is,” he says. “If they release cool stuff people will just complain that they should be focused on the buses.”

Perhaps the cult of non-card Hop options is all a moot point: Auckland Transport has announced that tapping on with contactless credit cards, phones and smartwatches will be an option by 2024. A national ticketing system that allows payment on all public transport systems is also going to be rolled out from 2024: no more having to shuffle your Christchurch Metro card out of the way when you’re looking for your Snapper or Bee card. Will the government have any more willingness to look beyond rectangles for the new transport system? Only time will tell. 

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