Talking whaka-tū/-tō/-tā and -tē (but not -tī)

Today I learnt “whakatō”. I already knew whakatū and whakatā, so I wondered if there were a fourth and fifth “whaka-” to round out the set of vowels.

It turns out the answer is, not quite.

whakatū - to make stand, erect, put up, construct, raise, establish.

whakatō - to plant, introduce, insert, cause to conceive, fertilise.

whakatā - to take breath, catch breath, rest, relax, have a break, retire.

whakatē - to squeeze fluid out (of anything).

whakatī - not actually a Māori kupu

The Reo Project | Day 164

Run better meetings using the "Hui Process"

I spend a fair bit of time in meetings, and have recently had the opportunity to host meetings and other gatherings for newly formed groups and initiatives.

I’ve deliberately used the following Hui Process* to structure our time together, and I’m not going back.

  1. Mihi - initial greeting and engagement

  2. Whakawhānaungatanga - making a connection

  3. Kaupapa - attending to the main purpose of the encounter

  4. Poroporoake - concluding the encounter

It’s simple, but also deeply challenging for someone like me who is drilled in the traditional (western) approach to meetings.

The article is linked below and worth a read. It’s also quite brief, although written for a medial context.

The Reo Project | Day 163

*”Hui Process from: Lacey, Cameron & Huria, Tania & Beckert, Lutz & Gilles, Matea & Pitama, Suzanne. (2011). The Hui Process: A framework to enhance the doctor-patient relationship with Māori. The New Zealand medical journal. 124. 72-8.

Opening karakia for a learning context

Yesterday I led a leadership development session. We opened our time together with this karakia:

He hōnore, he korōia ki te Atua

He maungārongo ki te whenua

He whakaaro pai ki ngā tāngata katoa

Hangaia e te Atua he ngākau hou

Ki roto, ki tēnā, ki tēnā o mātou

Whakatōngia tō wairua tapu

Hei āwhina, hei tohutohu i a mātou

Hei ako hoki i ngā mahi mō tēnei rā

Āmine

Honour and glory to God

Peace on Earth

Goodwill to all people

Lord, develop a new heart

Inside all of us

Instil in us your sacred spirit

Help us, guide us

In all the things we need to learn today.

Amen

The Reo Project | Day 162

Days of the week

I’ve had the Māori days of the week written on my wall for over 12 months and haven’t learnt a single one,

Then I learnt a few kupu and all of a sudden they are much easier to remember!

Start with this list of 8 words, a few of which are fairly common.

  1. rā = day.

  2. hina = grey-haired.

  3. tū = to stand.

  4. apa = layer;

  5. pare = to protect, ward off, a headband.

  6. mere = a short, flat weapon of stone, often of greenstone.

  7. horoi = to wash

  8. tapu = sacred.

So the days of the week are:

  1. Rāhina | Grey hairs to start the week | Monday

  2. Rātū | Stand up day | Tuesday

  3. Rāapa | Hump day layers it on | Wednesday

  4. Rāpare | Protect my santity | Thursday

  5. Rāmere | Not beaten yet | Friday

  6. Rāhoroi | Wash day | Saturday

  7. Rātapu | Holy day | Sunday

The Reo Project | Day 159

Sentence starters

Here's what I think I've learnt so far

Questions:

  1. Ā hea ... [ai]? When will something happen? hea = placeholder for time.

  2. Nā wai ...? Who did something? wai = placeholder for person/people.

  3. Ko wai ...? Who is someone? wai = placeholder for person/people.

  4. Kei hea ...? Where is something? Hea = placeholder for location.

  5. I hea ... ? Where was something? Hea = placeholder for location.

  6. Mā hea ... [ai]? How did you travel? Hea = placeholder for method of travel.

  7. Nō hea ... ? Where is something/someone from? hea = placeholder for whenua.

  8. I aha ... ? What happened? aha = placeholder for what happened.

  9. E hia ... ? How many (things)? Hia = placeholder for number.

  10. Tokohia ... ? How many (people)? Hia = placeholder for number.

  11. He aha te utu mō te ... ? What does something cost? aha = placeholder for price.

  12. He aha te tāima ... ai? What time does something happen? aha = placeholder for time.

  13. Kei te haere ... ki hea? Where are you going? hea = placeholder for location.

  14. Kei te haere ... ki te aha? What are you going to do? aha = placeholder for action.

Answers:

Answers to questions are basically the question repeated with aha (what) hea (when, where) or wai (who) replaced.

Statements:

Other than replying to questions using the same form, I can start sentences using the following:

  1. He ... ! A descriptive statement or verbal sentence referring to a non-specific thing.

  2. Ko ... ! Talking about a specific thing.

  3. Kua ... ! Starting a verbal sentence where something has started but may not be finished, or has been completed.

  4. Ka ... ! Starting a verbal sentence with a non-specific time orientation.

  5. Ki ... ! Starting a verbal sentence referring to a past time.

  6. Kia ... ! A stative where it is desirable to reach the state.

  7. E ... ! I really don't know when this is supposed to be used...

The Reo Project | Day 158

An Anki vocabulary deck for food time

I created an Anki deck for food times. You can download it here.

All you need is this list and the phrase Homai ki te thing (Give (to me) the thing) and you can kōrero Māori at your table!

Ka rawe! Awesome!

The list is based on a few resources which I recommend:

  • The Kupu o te Rā “Food Time” list. This list has sentence examples and audio files for many of the words.

  • The Māori Dictionary online website. This has audio files for every kupu in the deck.

  • Te Kākano. It’s the textbook I’ve been working on and I think the way it introduces Te Reo is excellent. And there’s heaps of online media resources (and apparently an app, which I haven’t been able to download…).

Ngā mihi e te whānau.

The Reo Project | Day 157

tēnei ... / te ... nei

I think that tēnei ika and te ika nei are both correct. Similarly for tēnā and tērā.

I think.

But a sentence definitely has a different flow and "mouth feel" depending on which one you use. So there's probably a preference depending the context.

Probably.

I’m not sure about ēnei ika / ngā ika nei, but I’m guesses they’re both fine.

I guess.

I’m learning.

The Reo Project | Day 156

mā/mō for future possession

Yesterday I was stumped trying to figure out how to say: “This hat is for her” and other similar sentences (about hats) which are about future possession.

So today, I learnt about mā and mō.

In this context, their the same particle indicate future (or “unrealised”) possession for the ā and ō categories.

Of course, mā has many more uses in Te Reo, but in this context is the ā category equivalent of mō.

The Reo Project | Day 155

Have a crack!

I received an email today from a mate also on a Te Reo journey of their own.

They’re pretty epic at learning stuff. They draw knowledge maps, write A3 cheat sheets and continue to slog away even when, and especially when, it gets tough and boring.

They’re written about 50 different sentence constructions all around ownership to help them understand personal possessive pronouns. All in English though.

I took the opportunity to piggy-back on their enthusiasm and had a crack at whakamāori.

I learnt a few new things, I confirmed a few things. I’ve probably also made plenty of errors.

  1. I have to be specific about who I’m talking about when referring to multiple people. Rātou mātou tātou etc…

  2. He pōtae tōu / He tōu pōtae are both okay, and mean different things. I think. The latter is “your hat” and the other is “you have a hat”. I think.

  3. Ko and He. I hadn’t really grasped or used ko. I’d mostly used He, te/ngā and possessives. It turns out, all the times I wasn’t sure what to use, I probably should be using ko!

So. When there’s an opportunity to learn, have a crack!

The Reo Project | Day 154

p.s. My mates say don’t watch The Stranger.

Why "ai"?

I can’t quite get my head around when/why/how to use ai in Māori grammar.

It seems to be a tag in verb-based phrases that signifies the end of a particular part of the sentence.

It’s always in some questions such as Ā hea …. ai? but only sometimes in responses.

For now, i’m definitely just including it in my sentence constructions based on gut feel!

The Reo Project | Day 153

Committed.

Yesterday I was accepted into my Te Reo course for the year.

Full year, 50% full time, full immersion.

Other than queuing up for student ID cards and that palaver, I’m now fully committed to The Reo Project for 2020!

I suspect it’s going to be quite the ride…

The Reo Project | Day 152

Unlearning 'hea'

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

Looking for a good Te Reo Māori podcast?

Look no further.

My favourite is Taringa, put out by Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.

I’ve been dipping in and out of this podcast for the last couple of months, and yesterday my brain finally clicked into gear and I could hear the kupu, or more specifically the individual sounds that make up the kupu.

I still can’t understand much of the kōrero Māori, but having a bilingual podcast (with the occasional full Te Reo Māori episode) has helped balance out the book-focused study I’ve been doing so far.

An honourable mention should also be made to Kōrerorero. I only listened to a couple of episodes before culling back to just one podcast, and this nearly made it through.

The Reo Project | Day 146

Saying 'and'

Yesterday I learnt about using me, ā and hoki to say ‘and’.

Here’s how I think it works…

Me is for listing specific things. “This cat and that dog.” Tēnei ngeru me tērā kurī.

Ā is for listing generic things. “A cat and a dog.” He ngeru, ā, he kurī.

Hoki is used in conjunction with Ā to group things together. “There are cats and dogs.” He ngeru, ā, he kurī hoki.

Note: I’ve made up these examples, please don’t take my word for it.

The Reo Project | Day 145

First mini immersion experience

This morning I had breakfast at a friends place. They made pancakes and invited a few others along as well. There were kids flying around on bikes, fruit everywhere, and the biggest bottle of maple syrup I have ever seen.

But.

Everyone else has spent at least a year studying Te Reo.

Everyone else has been speaking Te Reo at home and/or in their work place.

I was way out of my depth.

I contributed very little.

Given that I’m hoping to drop into a full immersion course this year, it was a good reality check.

Because the reason I didn’t contribute much isn’t because I had nothing to say.

It wasn’t because I hadn’t learnt enough.

It was because I didn’t know how to speak Te Reo Māori with people. Because I had never tried.

It was because I was scared.

It was because I didn’t know where to start.

It was the most important experience I’ve had on this journey so far.

Here’s to being out of my depth, poorly equipped and freaking out.

The Reo Project | Day 143

What to do when you feel like you're not making progress

Writing took a back seat to study this week.

And also I needed to catch up on sleep (8pm bedtimes are incredible!)

But I did have the time to read, and then rave about, an interesting little picture from Mr James Clear, of Atomic Habits.

The Plateau of Latent Potential

You can read about it by googling “James Clear plateau of latent potential”, so I won’t explain it in detail, except to say this:

  • Locking in a daily routine of working on your Te Reo Māori is success. Not achieving a particular level of fleuency/competency.

  • It’s going to feel like you aren’t making as much progress as you expected for a while.

  • Eventually (and this might be months or years away) you are going to feel like you’ve finally got where you expected to be.

  • If you keep up the daily routine, you’ll scream right past that point and won’t believe where you are pretty quickly (this might be years, or even months after).

Basically: Cultivating a habitual routine of learning a language sets you up for major wins later. Anyone can work through a textbook or take a class, but the hard work is continuing to extend your skill without the classroom, textbook or motivation.

The Reo Project | Day 142

How do you learn a second language if you're dyslexic?

I was talking with a friend today about how I was using flashcards to learn kupu Māori and learnt that my approach wouldn’t work for them as they are dyslexic.

The best flashcards aren’t purely textual, but mine are because, well, I’m lazy.

But it got me thinking: How would someone with dyslexia learn a new language?

In my experience, figuring our how to make a system work for the outliers usually results in a system that works better for the mainstream.

Maybe I need to go back and make those pictures for my flashcards after all…

The Reo Project | Day 138

Use place names to increase your vocabulary.

In Māori, place names (and proper nouns in general) are often quite descriptive.

  • Tūranga-nui-a-kiwa. (Gisborne/Poverty Bay)

  • Whānga-nui-o-Tara. (Wellington)

  • Piopiotahi. (Milford Sound)

  • Ngāmotu. (New Plymouth)

Learning the meaning of the individual words makes it much easier to remember the place names, as you’re remembering miniature stories, not memorising names.

Here’s an example for the Gisborne/Poverty Bay

Tūranga-nui-a-kiwa. (Gisborne)

  • Tūranga: (noun) stand, position, situation, site, foundation, stance

  • Nui: (verb) to be large, big, many, plentiful

  • Kiwa: An ancestor.

Tūranga-nui-a-kiwa / Gisborne / The big site of Kiwa

Here’s some more interesting actual background to this name.

Piopiotahi. (Milford Sound)

  • Piopio: A type of bird

  • Tahi: one.

Piopiotahi / Milford Sound / One bird

The Reo Project | Day 136