Mātou Kōrero/Our Story

Kupu Rorirori was born out of my journey to regain my Reo in 2022. After spending the last 8 years in an English-immersed world, completing my engineering degree and now working as an engineer, I decided it was time. Prior to this I would rarely hear Te Reo spoken. If it was heard, often it was by myself either as an advocate for the language or as a question/translator board for peers.

End of 2021 I enrolled at Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa. I decided to commit to learning more, having not actively used Te Reo since high school. In my experience many Māori share this common story. Often the idea of using Te Reo and remaining immersed seems limiting. Along with that the feelings of whakama or shame in not being fluent. Further to that re-entering a school setting now as an adult.

Realizing how much I'd lost was humbling to say the least. But I was still very grateful that there were places like Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa to Learn.

During one of the classes we were playing a kēmu using the English alphabet to form kupu Māori. Normally this wouldn't seem out of the ordinary I use it every day. As we continued I found it strange and bit out of place that we didn't have anything using Te Ara Pū Māori. We were using letters with masking tape for 'Ng' or 'Wh' but didn't exactly fit the task. If we were playing a game in Te Reo, why were we not using the Te Reo alphabet? After scouring the internet, I still couldn't find many resources or an example of a game similar to what we were playing in class.

Having a natural desire to fix problems, I took to Google to search for how to create board games. Several caffeine-filled nights later, I had created an initial concept. I then reached out to friends to help me develop the idea further. The next thing I knew, Kupu Rorirori was born. We've put a lot of background mahi into Kupu Rorirori and its creation and we can't wait to see people playing and learning Te Reo!