I first learnt to use hea in sentences asking about the location of something.
Kei hea aku kī? - Where are my keys?
Kei hea taku koti? - Where is my coat?
Kei hea tō kāinga ināianei? - Where is your home at the moment?
Kei hea… is the main piece of this sentence structure, so I learnt that kei tells me the sentence is in the present tense and hea is to do with location.
Except it isn’t.
Ā hea … is a future tense question (the Ā) but hea in this case means “when”.
Ā hea rātou tae mai ai? - When will they arrive?
Mind. Blown.
It turns out, the two words work together to tell me about the upcoming sentence.
It also turns out, this makes waaaay more sense when you listen to someone speak that when it is written. The gap before hea seems obvious in written form and suggests that the words can be treated separately. Spoken, with intonation and everything else that nuances and assist with understanding speech, the first two words blend together.
And hea is basically a placeholder for the answer!
So:
Kei hea… Where are…?
I hea… Where was…?
Ā hea… When will…?
Nō hea… From where…?
The Reo Project | Day 148