There’s a difference between māori and Māori, and it just clicked for me.
I’ve just started reading Te Hāhi Mihinare: The Māori Anglican Church by Hirini Kaa. As I read, I’ve taken to scribbling notes in margins wherever something stands out to me, or makes sense to me, or makes no sense. I’m right at the beginning, and Kaa is riffing on Mātauranga Māori (note the capital there).
Circumstantially, I was also listening to my favourite podcast Tāringa (taringapodcast.com) where the hosts went on a little tangent about kupu Māori which have very different meanings. Once of the kupu looked at was māori/Māori.
Here’s what I took away from it.
Māori (capital M) refers to a people group. In the way that Te Reo works, this could be a noun, verb or modifier.
māori (lower-case m) is a modifier that has meanings include normal, indigenous and freely. It’s always a modifier, except for when it is referring to a person who is indigenous.
Now I knew this, but I didn’t really know it, until I read Kaa’s paragraph on Mātauranga Māori. Which is when it struck me, because he refers to mātauranga Māori as distinct from, but related to mātauranga-ā-iwi.
I’m not going to attempt to define those terms (you should read the book, it’s great so far) but simply reflect on this.
Engaging with material outside pure language learning resources is really awesome for language learning (and way more fun most of the time!).
It isn’t until I have to apply a concept outside the context in which I learnt it that things really start to get tested, and also start to stick.
So. Go buy a book, watch a TV show (maybe even a kids show, or a crunchy little documentary), or listen to a podcast.