Ngā Manu Kōrero is
a competition open to all secondary school pupils to support everyone to learn and speak te reo Maori.
King’s High School year 10 pupil Zane Rakete-Gray (14) took part in the junior Maori category at the Otago and Southland regional contest and is set to compete at the national competition in Dunedin which will take place at the Edgar Centre from September 19-21.
Zane said he spoke about his transition from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ōtepoti to King’s in his speech.
He made the move to play rugby but faced some challenges with the different environment.
"In Kura it’s all in Maori ... and here you get like a couple hours a week speaking Maori.
"So that was a big big difference."
Leading up to the competition , when not at rugby training, doing homework or playing netball with his family, he was rehearsing his speech with his sister.
"I probably started writing a couple months before the actual competition and then two weeks before I drilled it every night until about 11."
He only managed to remember his nine-minute speech two nights before the competition, but then forgot most of it during his speech and made a lot of it up on the spot.
"Honestly I was just trying to be funny.
"I’m a visual learner, so even if everybody listening doesn’t understand what I’m saying, they can still understand the main idea with my actions."
