An important factor in successfully learning a language is listening to a lot of content in that language. If you're not surrounded by te reo Māori speakers it can be difficult to immerse. One way around this is to create an "immersion environment" - always have content in te reo Māori available to listen to whenever you have some free time, or have it playing in the background while you are doing other tasks.

I listen to te reo Māori podcasts while driving in the car. I like to treat my car as a space for immersion in te reo Māori - either via waiata or podcasts. Here are some te reo Māori only podcasts I listen to:

A Māori Podcast - This is a weekly podcast in te reo Māori by Ihira. It covers grammar, whakataukī, games, and readings from old Māori newspapers. There is also a patreon page about the podcast.

Whakamīere - This podcast regularly publishes translations of Aesop's Fables, Winnie the Pooh and other well known literature. They also have a Patreon page.

Whakamāori - A panel of translators discuss translations into Māori of various resources. Hear their thought processes of why they chose particular ways of translating things. The resources they choose to translate are varied - Movie quotes, slogans, the Shortland Street theme, Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, etc. At the time of writing this post there are three seasons.

Radio Waatea News - Radio Waatea have their news broadcasts in te reo Māori available online. They are only about five minutes long and are a good way to get an overview in Māori of what's happening in Te Ao Māori. Unfortunately they don't have a podcast compatible RSS feed but you can listen via the website and download the audio.

Te Karare - Another daily te reo Māori news program, this one from TVNZ. They have short snippets of each topic but also have the full episode. I don't know of a way to get a podcast player compatible RSS feed from YouTube itself but services like PodTube can produce one for any YouTube channel.

Taringa - Although not completely in te reo Māori, except for special episodes, there's plenty of content in te reo in each episode, discussing kīwaha, whakataukī, iwi history, grammar, etc.

Aside from podcasts there is plenty of other content available to watch or listen. I prefer to listen so I can do other things at the same time. I want to create a constant environment of immersion. I find listening rather than watching also activates the imagination allowing an association between the Māori words and the "feeling" of the meaning rather than trying to translate.

Māori+ has a lot of content in te reo Māori - I like to listen to the audio of shows like Ōpaki or Ako to get immersion as well as learning the language. As a bonus, Ako has PDF worksheets available summarising key points of the episodes.

Disney+ has te reo Māori dubs of some popular Disney movies. Moana, The Lion King, Coco, Frozen and others. In New Zealand these are found as seperate movie listings for the reo Māori versions, but in other countries listings the dub may be found in the "Extras" tab of the movie description. You'll even find a Tahitian dub for Moana there!

Kura Productions - A Māori production company based in Auckand, on YouTube they have a number of series of te reo Māori programs.

As well as listening in the car, if you have a podcast or audio player on your phone, take the opportunity to listen to some te reo Māori content when you have downtime or are doing tasks that don't require your full attention. Doing housework, dishes, resting, etc are all great times to listen to something.

Some of the content I've listed is useful for beginner learners and some for more advanced learners. Remember that you don't need to understand all the content. The idea is to tune your ears to the sounds of the reo, pick out words and structures you understand and try and get the gist of what is happening. Get used to not understanding every single word. Being resilient to uncertainty is an important language learning skill!

Do you know any other te reo Maori immersive content? Let me know!

It's Sāmoa Language Week in New Zealand this week so I thought it would be interesting to compare some Sāmoan language sentence structures with Māori language sentence structures.

Please note the disclaimer at the end of the article and investigate the list of references there for more authoritative information.

Both the Sāmoan and Māori languages are Austronesian languages which means they have some similar features. Sāmoan (and other Western pacific languages) split off from the language base that it shares with Māori a long time ago so Māori differs from Sāmoan to a greater extent than languages like Tahitian or Cook Island Māori.

The diagram below is from chapter 3 of a thesis by Yuko Otsuka, titled "Ergativity in Tongan". It shows a "family tree" of some of the Polynesian languages, which demonstrates where Samoan sits in comparison to Māori.

In this post I'll compare verb sentences. To talk about verb sentences we need some verbs. In the table below are some verbs in Sāmoan and the Māori equivalents.

The apostrophe in the Sāmoan equivalent for "kai" is a glottal stop. This means "'ai" would be pronounced like "ai" but with a sharper start/stress to the "a".

We'll also be using some personal pronouns. Things get a little more complicated here so I'll only look at the singular pronouns - the equivalent of "I", "You" and "He/She".

In Sāmoan there are two versions of these pronouns. They are the "emphatic pronouns" and the "descriptive pronouns". Emphatic pronouns are used in the subject of sentences where you are placing the emphasis on who is doing the action, whereas descriptive pronouns are used when the emphasis is more on what is being done than who is doing it.

We'll look at the descriptive pronouns as this more closely matches the meaning of simple active sentences in Māori.

Descriptive pronouns can only be used as the subject of sentences. Pronouns in other parts of the sentence (as the object for example) would need to use the emphatic pronouns.

Action Sentences using Descriptive Pronouns

Simple action sentences in Māori following a pattern of "<tense marker> + <verb> + <subject>". I wrote a post on this a while back, Types of Verbs in Te Reo Māori.

In Sāmoan, simple action sentences that use descriptive pronouns follow the pattern "<tense marker> + <subject> + <verb>".

Notice that the subject of the sentence, the do-er, comes after the tense marker and before the verb. This is quite different from te reo Māori! Let's look at some examples then go into detail. Try and work out which parts of the Sāmoan sentence are the verb, subject and tense marker.

Past Tense

The following table shows the pattern for an action that occurred in the past and has been completed, with the verb "to sleep" as an example:

Present Tense

The following table shows the pattern for an action that is currently occurring and is ongoing. It uses "to eat" as the verb for an example.

Note that to express present tense in te reo Māori we use "Kei te" or "E ... ana" as the tense marker. I'm going to use "Kei te" for this post.

The tense marker "Kei te" in Māori expresses present tense, but also expresses that the action is continuous - basically what the "-ing" verb ending in English expresses. The "'O'lo'o" tense marker in Sāmoan also expresses this continuous aspect.

Past Perfect Tense

Past Perfect tense is the equivalent of "have/has" sentences in English. These types of sentences express an action that has been completed in the past but has relevance for the current time, or another expressed time. In Māori we use "Kua" for this. The table below demonstrates the pattern using "to walk" as the verb.

The similarity in the Sāmoan word "'ua" to the Māori word "kua" matches the similarity in "'ai" vs "kai".

Future Tense

To express future tense in te reo Māori we can use "Ka". The situation with "ka" is actually a bit more complex than "future tense" as it can express other tenses. It picks up the tense from a context already established, like using "āpōpō" or some other time marker. For these examples, imagine the tense has already been established with a future time marker. The pattern for these sentences using the verb "to sit" is below.

Habitual

There is a tense marker in Sāmoan that is used to indicate habitual, or implied future. This is used to say things like "I go to the hospital", or when answering "I eat" to the question "What do you do when you're hungry?".

For those sentences that use descriptive pronouns, the Sāmoan tense marker is "te" and it is structured differently in that the subject appears before the tense marker.

In Māori we'd often use "habitual ai" for the habitual tense, but "ka" can also be used for the general case above when answering the question with "I eat". The table below shows this pattern.

Conclusion

This has been a very brief look at one small aspect of Sāmoan and how it compares to Māori - using Māori as a hook to learn a bit of Sāmoan. I encourage you to try this process during the various language weeks, or any other time, as a way to learn a bit more about the Pacific world.

I sometimes hear an argument from people who don't want to learn Māori that it is a waste of time, no body speak it, or it would be better to learn languages like French or Mandarin.

My thinking is that we live in the pacific, we are surrounded by other pacific cultures and languages. The Māori language is a close cousin to these languages, and learning Māori makes the task of learning these languages a bit easier.

While on the surface Sāmoan and Māori seem quite different, we see shared words, the use of tense markers instead of conjugation to express tense, and similar pronunciation. I'm far more likely to hear Sāmoan, Tongan or Māori than other languages in the spaces I inhabit.

Many of the romance languages (French, Spanish, etc) are easier to pick up because we know English. Learning Māori early, alongside English, enables picking up the Pacific languages easier, and the romance languages through English.

Learning Māori and other Pacific languages enables us to learn more about the culture and understand better our near neighbours.

Disclaimer and References

My understanding of Sāmoan prior to looking into it for Sāmoa Language Week was low. Most of what I've written is here is from things I've learnt while exploring various resources, listed below, my knowledge of te reo Māori and some knowledge of Tongan. My apologies for any errors and I welcome corrections and feedback in the comments.

Thanks to the following references:

• Sāmoan Verb Resource at samoan.ws
• Gagana Sāmoa by Galumalemana Afeleti Hunkin.
• Sāmoan Language YouTube Channel.

I've been reading about language learning via the natural approach, and decided to try writing some simple examples to help learn basic concepts.

The idea behind the natural approach is to have simple content that is entirely in the target language, but at a level that is just above the level of the reader. Grammar is not explicitly explained, but rather demonstrated through immersion in the content. My first attempt is below, comments welcome.

The images in this post were created with the assistance of AI, interacting with DALL-E 2 to iterate towards a suitable image.

ko ngā manu me te kiore

Kaiako: He manu te kererū. He aha te kererū?

Tauira: He manu.

Kaiako: He manu te tīrairaka?

Tauira: Āe, he manu.

Kaiako: He manu te kererū me te tīrairaka. He aha te kiore?

Tauira: He kararehe.

Kaiako: He manu te kiore?

Tauira: Kāo, he kararehe te kiore.

Kaiako: He manu nui te kererū. He manu nui te tīrairaka?

Tauira: Kāo, he manu iti.

Kaiako: He nui ake te kēreru i te tīrairaka?

Tauira: Aē, he nui ake.

Kaiako: He nui ake te tīrairaka i te kererū?

Tauira: Kāo, he iti ake te tīrairaka i te kererū.

Commentary

The reading exercise starts with how to describe what something is. In this case, a kererū, a tīrairaka and a kiore. The grammar for the structure breaks down this way:

To ask the question, "what is X", we use the question word "aha":

The answer repeats the question, replacing "aha" with the response:

To list more than one item in the "<object>" part of the statement, we use "me" for the equivalent of "and" in English:

We can add a describing word to the "<what it is>" portion of the statement to further describe it. This appears after the "<what it is>":

We can compare an object to see if it is more or less of a particular aspect compared to another object. To say something is more of a particular aspect:

To say something is less of a particular aspect:

Lets look at how to use "waenga" or "waenganui" to express the concept of "in-between", "amongst" or in the middle of something.

For the purpose of this post I'll be using "waenga" but "waenganui" is effectively the same meaning and can be used in the same place.

The Te Ako Dictionary reference for "waenga" reads:

1.(location) the middle, among, midst, amid, between, the intervening space - a location word, or locative, which follows immediately after particles such as "ki", "i", "hei" and "kei" or is preceded by "a" when used as the subject of the sentence. Variation of waenganui.

The word "waenga" fills the grammatical position of a "local noun" - it's the name of a location. It can be used where-ever a location is used in a sentence to express the concept of being in-between, amongst, or in the middle of something.

Located at

The pattern for a sentence using "waenga" to mean "object" is in the middle of "object 2" looks like this:

In this example the sentence "Kei waenga te tāone i te ngahere" translates to "The town is in the middle of the forest."

We can use the tense marker "I" to represent past tense:

"I waenga te motoka i te rori" translates to "The car was in the middle of the road."

The tense marker "Hei" represents future tense:

"Hei waenga te pōkiha i ngā heihei" translates to "The fox will be amongst the chickens." Notice that "waenga" can mean "middle of" or "amongst".

Action happening at a location

Where the location is expressed as part of the sentence, rather than at the beginning, we use "i" as the particle preceding "waenga" and "i" as the particle following it to mark the thing that the object is amongst or between:

The phrase "Kei te tipu ake te putiputi i waenga i ngā rākau" translates as "The flower is growing between/amongst the trees."

Motion

Things change slightly when we talk about motion happening to the middle, from the middle, or through the middle of something.

Motion from the middle of something uses the particle "i" to mark where the middle is:

"I hīkoi ia i waenga o te tāone" translates to "He/She walked from the middle of the town."

Motion to the middle of something uses the particle "ki" to mark where the middle is:

The phrase "Ka oma rātou ki waenga o te ngahere" translates as "They will run to the middle of the forest." Notice that we don't use "te", as in, "ki te waenga o te ngahere" - locations like "waenga", "runga", "raro", etc are not preceded by a determiner like "te".

Motion through the middle of something, perhaps going to somewhere else, also uses "i" as the particle proceeding "waenga" and following it, as in the "Action happening at a location" example above. This means there can be some ambiguity in meaning so context of the sentence must be taken into account.

"I te āta hīkoi mātou i waenga i ngā kuiki" translates as "We were carefully walking amidst/through the middle of the thorns."

I read an article recently titled "The New Old Way of Learning Languages". The article outlines a method of learning languages that involves reading texts in the target language with a literal translation of the text immediately below it in a language the reader knows.

The idea behind it, as far as I understand, is to enable the reader to quickly read texts in the target language that wouldn't normally be approachable due to a lack of vocabulary. Having the translated words immediately below the text enables quick scanning to find the meaning of the work, while staying in the flow of the target language. Through reading you pick up more of the vocabulary and grammar naturally.

There are books available in Te Reo Māori that have both English and Māori versions of the text. Sometimes these are Māori on one side of the page, English on the other - for example, Sleeps Standing/Moetū by Witi Ihimaera, translated by Hemi Kelly, or sometimes they are different books entirely like Harry Potter.

These are great for reading the te reo Māori version and using the English as a guide for unfamiliar vocabulary but often the Māori translation is a reimagining of the English in "whakaaro Māori" - Māori concepts. This is good for recreational reading of Māori text but makes it less useful for using the English as a guide for learning words and grammar. The Hamilton method outlined in the original article I quoted before prefers a literal translation of the words/phrases rather than a reconstruction of the idea to make learning easier.

To test out the method with Te Reo Māori I tried creating an example using Psalm 23 from Te Paipera Tapu. I found it difficult to do an interleaved English translation due to the fact that word ordering in English is quite different from Māori. Given the line "E ārahi ana ia i ahau i te taha o ngā wai āta rere", a literal interleave of the English was something like "Leads he me the side of the waters gently flowing." Not very readable.

Eventually I settled on an approach where the interleaved text is on multiple lines. The following image shows this sentence with the interleaved text:

In this snippet the English text is meant to be read from left to right, top to bottom. Each line contains a translation of the word in the standard English order, underneath the relevant Māori word in the original sentence.

When reading the Māori text you can scan the column below the Māori word to see the English. You can use the variation across the multiple lines to get an idea of how the word order is re-ordered to match the grammar of English.

I'm not entirely convinced this is useful but I'd like to produce some more texts in this style, and use them for reading practice and see how it goes. One issue with interleave texts that I come across is "cheating". That is, even though I can read the Māori text my brain gravitates to the English automatically and reads it when I don't need to. A similar issue exists when watching Māori language films with English subtitles. I tried to avoid this with a smaller font with the English text but there may be better options to explore.

I've put the PDF of the interleaved Māori and English Psalm 23 online. Note that the translation and layout is my rough draft to test the interleaving process and shouldn't be taken as any form of official text or translation of the Psalm. Comments and suggestions about the approach are welcome.

What's the difference between using the tense markers "e...ana" and "kei te" in Te Reo Māori? This is a question that comes up quite often in Te Reo Māori groups and classes. In this post I look at the two options and compare how they are used.

In my previous post on types of verbs I noted that "e...ana" and "kei te" are both "present tense, continuous action" tense markers.

The "present tense" part means that the verb being performed is currently happening now. If I say "I am running", that means I am currently running at this moment in time.

The "continuous action" part means that the verb is something that not only is happening now, but is expected to continue happening for a period of time - it has not yet been completed. Let's compare "I ate" vs "I was eating". The first is not a continuous action statement, it is about the event of eating being completed. The second is an example of continuous action, it is about the act of eating continuing and not yet having been completed.

This is a summary of my thoughts on usage of "e...ana" vs "kei te" in my own usage of Te Reo Māori, from information obtained from books and classes. I follow this with details of what some grammar books say on the subject.

In practice I generally treat "e...ana" and "kei te" as being interchangeable. They have the same meaning to the listener. The following are equivalent:

Different iwi prefer one usage over the other. Depending on the dialect of Te Reo Māori you're learning, or the area you reside, you'll probably hear "e...ana" more often than "kei te" or vice versa. You might like to prefer to use one of the two tense markers over the other if you want to stick to the dialect or regional variance of the reo you are learning.

Tense markers in Te Reo Māori indicate an action occurs at a particular time. The time that the action occurs can be "absolute" or "relative".

A tense marker that operates in "absolute" time occurs at the current time in the context of the written or verbal statement. In the case of a verbal statement the time is the time of utterance of that statement.

A tense marker that operates in "relative" time occurs at a time already established by another tense marker or time setting statement. It makes no change to the current time where the action occurs, other than to state that this action follows any previous action.

"Kei te" is an absolute time marker. "E...ana" is a relative time marker. A contrived example showing the difference between absolute and relative markers:

"E...ana" is used in additional ways that "kei te" can't be used. Harlow gives three examples in the section I quote below.

What do Te Reo Māori reference books say about the two different tense markers? I looked through a few of the books I have at hand and the following is some of what they have to say.

John C Moorfield

John C. Moorfield has this to say about the two tense markers in the book "Te Kākano":

While "e...ana" may be used for present, future or past tense time, "kei te" is only used for present or future time. "I te" is used for the past continuous tense. "I te" and "Kei te" may be used with nouns as well as verbs, unlike true verbal markers such as "i", "ka", "kua", "me" and "e...ana" which are normally used only with stative and ordinary verbs but not with verbs only used as nouns.

John Foster

John Foster in "He Whakamārama" says:

Note that "E...ana" can be translated as past, present or future tense (is, was, will be), according to the context of the story.

Bruce Biggs

Bruce Biggs in "Let's Learn Māori" refers to "kei te" and "i te" as "pseudo-verbal continuous:

with the same meaning as the continuous tense formed with "e...ana", and conveniently translated by the "-ing" tense in English.

Biggs also refers to a dialectal variation:

The pseudo-continuous is an extremely common construction in the eastern dialect area where it largely replaces the "e...ana" tense of the western dialect area, which includes North Auckland and all of the North Island west of the Central Plateau and ranges.

Ray Harlow

Ray Harlow in "A Māori Reference Grammar" goes into quite a bit more detail (p. 52):

Like "ka", the combination of the preposed particle "e" and the postposed particle "ana" does not express tense; it is not present, or past or future. Rather it indicates the ongoing or progressive nature of an event or state, and is thus called progressive. When used by themselves with no indication of time, these particles usually refer to the present.
....
However, this two particle construction can equally well be used in contexts referring to the past or future, and simply indicates the ongoing nature of an event or state of affairs.

Harlow continues with details on "kei te" (p. 53):

"Kei te" is used for the present and future and "i te" for the past."
...
In meaning, "kei te" and "i te" are thus similar to "e...ana", and the two patterns are interchangeable in many cases. There are however three constructions where "e...ana" seems to be preferred."

Harlow lists these three constructions as:

Winifred Bauer

Winifred Bauer in "The Reed Reference Grammar of Māori" says:

... "e...ana" is a relative tense marker: the time reference is derived from the context. With no context, "e...ana" is usually interpreted by Māori consultants as present, as in (621), but can equally well be future as in (622) or past as in (623) if the context specifies. Its default reading, however, is present. "E...ana" also has an aspectual value: it marks events as incomplete and on-going at the time specified by the context. (624) shows the "e...ana" can occur in habitual contexts and (625) that it can occur with stative verbs, so that in Comrie's terminology, "e...ana" is imperfective. This reflects the fact that it occurs in a wider range of contexts than "kei te" and "i te".

With regards to "kei te", Bauer writes:

"Kei te" is also absolute, but marks non-past. It is found in both present (605) and future (606) contexts. It is interpreted as present by Māori speakers when there are no indications of the time reference in the surrounding context. Like "i te", it also marks continuous aspect: (607) shows "kei te" used with a stative verb.

With regards to dialect frequency, Bauer says:

"Kei te" and "i te" are much commoner in Eastern dialects than Western ones (where "e...ana" is used instead). Even in Eastern dialects, "kei te" is more frequent than "i te", and in Western dialects "i te" is rare. "I te" and "kei te" are both very rare in subordinate constructions in all dialects. "E...ana" is used instead.

These are the example sentences that Bauer references above:

Conclusion

Use "kei te", "e...ana" or both as you prefer. They'll be treated as equivalent by listeners. Follow the advice of your whānau, Te Reo teacher or learning material as to which to use so you can remain consistent within the dialect or region that you are learning. Keep the academic information above in mind as a means to learn about the deeper meaning of the tense markers but try not to stress over which is right or wrong. It's more important to use Te Reo Māori, no matter if you are making mistakes or not.

I tērā Rāmere, ka haere au ki tētahi konohete ōpaki, whakarongo ai i ētahi puoro, whakaahua anō hoki ai i ētahi tāngata puoro. Ko "Powerfest Summer Series #1" te ingoa o taua konohete ōpaki. I tū taua mea ki New Lynn Community Centre ki Auckland.

I whakaataata tuatahi a Monstera. Ko taua rōpū he pēne "Punk" e tū nei rātou i te mana motuhake wāhine me te tāngata irakē.

Whai muri i taua pēne, ka whakaataata a Shotgun the Couch. Ko te mea whakarapa kē, kāore e taea e au te kite tō rātou Pukamata.

Tuatoru, ka whakaataata a Cootie Cuties. E ai ki tō rātou Pukamata, ko rātou he puoro aratini, he pēne punk, he pēne irakē anō hoki. He tino pai rawa atu tō rātou kaupapa.

I te mutunga o te pō, ka whakaataata a Gold Medal Famous. Hei tā tō rātou Pukamata, he pēne "Avant Guarde Pop".

I tino ngahau a Gold Medal Famous. I whakatangi rātou te Theramin, ā, ka tono rātou i ētahi o te hunga whakaraongo ki te whakatangi i taua puoro.

I te waenganui o ngā tāngata puoro, ka kōrero au ki ētahi o te hunga whakarongo, waihoki, ka whakaahua anō hoki i ētahi.

Anei ētahi atu o āku whakaahua:

Titiro i roto i ēnei whakaahua mai i Flickr mēnā ko ōu hiahia ka kite i ētahi atu mea.

Ka tū atu ngā konohete ōpaki e rua i tēnei marama. Ko "Powerfest Summer Series #2" ā te rua tekau mā tahi o Hānuere, ko "Powerfest Summer Series #3" ā te rua tekau mā waru o Hānuere, ki New Lynn Community Centre ki Tāmaki Makauru. Haere atu ki reira!

(Kua whiwhi au i te whakaae i ngā tāngata i roto i ēnei pikitea ki te whakairia ki te ipurangi. Aroha atu ki ō karu, kātahi anō au ka tīmata i taku haerenga reo. He manu hou ahau, he pī ka rere. Whakapā mai ki te whakatika i taku reo).

Commands are used to tell someone to do something. For example, in English we might say "Sit!", "Fetch the ball!" or "Go away!".

I often see questions online about why some commands in te reo Māori have a particle "e" before the command, or why some commands are in a passive form and some are not. This post outlines my understanding of commands in Te Reo Māori and when to choose one form over another. It is based upon my class notes. I welcome feedback to help clarify or correct my understanding.

Verbs with no object

In general the first word of a command sentence is the verb. So for:

"Go Away!"

the command is:

"Haere atu!"

Here, "Haere" is the verb, and "atu" is a direction indicator. If this were re-written to be an action occurring in the present tense, rather than a command, it would be "Kei te haere atu koe", or "You are going away". Sometimes I find it helpful to express what I want the other person to be doing as a sentence, to find the correct verb, then convert that to the command form.

If the verb is short - it has less than three vowels in it - then the verb is preceeded with "e". So for "Run!" the command is "E oma!". "Oma" only has two vowels, hence the "E" at the beginning of the sentence. Another example is "E noho!" or "Sit!".

Directional markers following the verb are added to the vowel count, so while "E piki" is usage for "Climb!", "E piki atu" is generally not for "Climb up!" - it would be "Piki atu!". Note that "rā" is one marker that does not add to the vowel count, hence "E noho rā!" being the term for "Goodbye, to those staying", and "Noho rā!" is not used.

If the command has additional sentence parts, like a location, then these are added in the same way as normal action sentences. So "Go to the marae!" is "Haere atu ki te Marae!" in the same way as you'd describe the action happening with "Kei te haere atu koe ki te Marae".

Verbs with objects

The examples given so far are "intransitive" verbs, or "tūmahi poro". For "transitive" verbs, tūmahi whiti, the form is the same if the object of the sentence is left out. For example, "E kai!", or "eat!" - the object to be eaten is not included. See my article on verb types for a breakdown of verbs into intransitive, transitive, etc.

In the case of  verbs where an object is being included, "Eat the apple!", there are two forms that can be used:

• If the verb is one that uses "ki" as the object marker then the verb is used as with intransitive verbs and the object marked with "ki". So "Titiro ki te motoka!" is how you'd express "Look at the car!". This is because "titiro" uses "ki" to mark the object of the sentence - as in the sentence "Kei te titiro koe ki te motoka", "You are looking at the car".
• If the verb uses "i" as the object marker in the sentence then the verb is converted into the passive form and there is no particle marking the object - just like a passive sentence. "Whanaia te pōro!", or "Kick the ball!". Looking at the structure of the passive form of the action version of the sentence helps understand why this structure works - "Kei te whanaia te pōro e koe", "The ball is being kicked by you". Even if there is no object, because it is being implied by pointing or context, if the object would have been marked with an "i" then the passive form is used. For example, "Tuhia!", or "Write!".

There is an exception to the rule about making the verb passive if it uses "i" for an object marker. The exception applies if the object is the person at which the command is directed. In that case, the non-passive form of the verb is used and the particle "i" is used as normal. So "Horoi i a koe!" is "Wash yourself!", not "Horoia koe!".

The following table shows some examples and explanation:

I used my class notes, Ray Harlow's "A Māori Reference Grammar" and Winifred Bauer's "The Reed Reference Grammar of Māori" as reference material while writing this post.

A great way of improving te reo Māori skills is reading books in te reo Māori. This helps pick up words meanings in context, grammar and idioms while doing an enjoyable activity. It's a wonderful feeling to successfully read and understand a book in a language that isn't your first language - it makes the learning feel real.

That said, I have many te reo Māori books I haven't got around to reading. This is mainly because I've gotten out of the habit of reading longer novels and my vocab and grammar isn't quite up to the level of being able to work through the books at an enjoyable pace. They sit around reminding me to stop procrastinating.

I used to find children's book's very difficult - they use idioms, words and grammar that tend to be used to appeal to children which I don't use day to day when speaking Māori to adults. It was very disheartening to pick up an "easy" child's book and not be able to read it. I've heard that you need to know about 95% of the words in a book and you can pick up the remaining 5% from context. This blog post from FluentU goes into this in more detail.

Thankfully I've now learnt enough vocabulary and grammar in my te reo journey to where children's books are easier for me to read and understand so I've started getting te reo Māori children's books from the library as a path to getting back into a habit of reading. I definitely recommend exploring your local library in New Zealand, they have a lot of childrens material in te reo Māori.

I thought I'd review some of the books as I read them, and write about how easy or difficult they were to read for an adult te reo Māori language learner.

The first book is "Te Pūrerehua me Te Maunga", Robyn Kahukiwa the author/ artist and Te Kahukiwa O'Hagan the translator.

This book has about 24 pages with large lettering and great illustrations. It's about a butterfly that wants to see the world and the mountain that the butterfly perceives as an obstacle in its way.

I was able to read the book without too much difficulty, only having to look up some of the idiomatic phrases that I wasn't familiar with. These phrases were:

Most of the book uses standard tense sentences, i ..., i te .. , kei te ..., ka ..., etc. There's no use of passive sentences, except the use of taea for "able to do", which is in passive form. For example:

It's an enjoyable story, and doesn't require a high level of grammar or vocab knowledge to read. It was definitely a fun read, I recommend it as good book for practicing reading if you understand the grammar constructs mentioned above, and aren't yet confident with passives, statives, etc.

In the te reo Māori class I attend we’ve been covering different types of verbs and how they affect sentence construction. This post is a tidied up version of my notes.

The different verb types we’ve gone through are:

Tūmahi whiti  - transitive verbs
Tūmahi poro   - intransitive verbs
Tūmahi wheako - experience verbs
Tūmahi oti    - stative verbs

Before going through verbs, a brief diversion into “reremahi” - action sentences.

Reremahi

Reremahi, or action sentences, are sentences where the main focus is the action being performed. They involve a subject performing an action and optionally an object that the action is performed upon.

These types of sentence structures follow the form:

<Tense marker> + <verb> + <subject>
<Tense marker> + <verb> + <subject> + <particle i/ki> + <object>

The tense marker indicates the time that the action is performed - past, present or future. Common tense markers are:

*An action in the past in relation to something even further back in the past, sometimes described as “recent past tense”. It is translated as “have” in English.

A simple sentence example would be:

An example that uses an object:

Tūmahi

“Tūmahi” is the te reo Māori word for ‘verb’. Verbs are action or doing words. If someone or something is doing something or performing an action, then that action is the verb. “Mahi” in te reo Māori can mean “to do” which helps to remember “tūmahi” as a doing word.

There are different types of verbs and I’ll describe these in the following sections. Why do we need to be able to identify the types of verbs? One common difficulty in constructing te reo Māori sentences is knowing whether to use “i” or “ki” to mark the object of the sentence. Different verb types use either “i” or “ki”. By being able to identify the type of verb it tells us which object marker to use.

Tūmahi Whiti

Tūmahi whiti are transitive verbs. A transitive verb expresses an action that affects an object. If it doesn’t affect an object it’s not a transitive verb.

For example, the verb “to hit” - saying “I hit” doesn’t make much sense - the sentence needs an object to complete the thought. “I hit the ball” - here “hit” is a transitive verb with “the ball” being the object.

Another example is the verb “to carry”. “The boy carried” isn’t a complete sentence, it needs an object. “carry” is therefore a transitive verb. “The boy carried the box”.

Why do we need to know if a verb is transitive or not? In English there is no object marker in a sentence - the object follows the verb. But in te reo Māori, objects are marked with a particle - either “i” or “ki”. Transitive verbs in te reo Māori use the particle “i” to mark the object. The previous example in te reo Māori would be:

Tūmahi poro

Tūmahi poro are intransitive verbs. These are verbs that don’t affect an object. They are just actions that subjects do that affect themselves. For example, the verb “to arrive”. A person can arrive, but they can’t arrive something. These sentences in te reo Māori don’t have an object at all:

Note that extra information can be added to a sentence - “the cat has sat on the mat” for example. But because “sat” is intransitive it has no object - the “on the mat” part of the sentence is not the object of the sentence, it’s extra information providing the location where the action occurred.

Tūmahi Wheako

Tūmahi wheako are experience verbs. These are verbs whereby the subject is an experiencer of something. They name a mental state or perception that the subject perceives. In these words the object of the sentence is the source of the experience.

Because they have an object they are similar to tūmahi whiti, transitive verbs, so why do we distinguish between them in te reo Māori? We do this because sentences with experience verbs mark the object (or the source of the experience) using the particle “ki” rather than the particle “i” which transitive verbs use.
Knowing which verbs are experience verbs requires memorising them. These are some of the experience verbs we’ve covered in class:

Some example sentences:

There are some exceptions to remember. The following are classified as experience verbs but they use “i” as the object marker:

• kite
• rongo

I don’t know why these are exceptions. Using the correct object marker for experience verbs seems to be a matter of remembering which verbs are experience verbs and remembering which are the exceptions within that list.

Tūmahi oti

Tūmahi oti are stative verbs. They’re also known as Tūāhua oti. A stative verb refers to a state or change of state rather than an action and the way the sentence is structured is quite different.

There’s no rule to identify whether a verb is a stative verb - they have to be remembered, much like tūmahi wheako. Some examples we learnt in class:

The sentence structure for sentences with tūmahi oti is different to that of sentences with the other types of verb. In these sentences the object of the sentence does not have an object marker particle, instead the subject of the sentence has one. They are structured like this:

<Tense marker> + <stative verb> + <object>
<Tense marker> + <stative verb> + <object> + <particle i> + <subject>

A example of the first form:

Notice the difference between the other verbs. The window is not breaking something. The window is in the state of broken. The agent is marked with “i” if there is one:

In sentences with stative verbs the “i” can be read as “by the” - the state of the object of the sentence has been reached by the actions of the subject.

The above example would probably read in English as “he missed the bus”, but because the verb used for “missed” is the stative verb “mahue”, a literal reading is “he has been left behind by the bus”. “He” is the object that is in the state of having been left behind by the actions of the subject, the bus.

Reading sentences with stative verbs is similar to reading passive sentences - which I'll cover in a later post. It’s easy to get the subject and object mixed up, but memorising the common stative verbs and learning to recognise when they appear in a sentence will help.

In my te reo Māori learning journey so far, I find writing easier than speaking, speaking easier than reading and reading easier than listening. In general, producing my own content in te reo Māori seems to be easier than understanding content produced by someone else.

This makes sense since - when producing my own content I can stick with the grammar and words that I know - what I say might be simple sentences but I can understand the meaning. Other people produce grammar, words and idioms that I may not be familiar with. They may have an accent or talk faster than I can deal with.

I often listen to the news broadcasts in te reo Māori on the iwi radio station, Radio Waatea. These are done by native speakers who talk fluently and use words related to current events. I struggle with comprehension in these broadcasts but I've started a process of active listening whereby I spend time listening, repeating and writing notes on a broadcast. This has helped when listening passively to the news as I now understand many of the common idioms they use. This post has some of the process I go through for my active study.

Radio Waatea has a podcasts page that lists the audio broadcasts they have available for listening on the website. I choose the "National News - Te Reo Māori" option which gives links to the individual broadcasts. I find it easier to pick the same broadcast at the same time daily as that usually has the same newsreader. By concentrating on one newsreader I pick up the idioms and speech patterns they use. Later I can switch to other types of news and newsreaders.

For this example I'm using the broadcast labelled 17th August 10am, Waatea News Bulletin read by Scotty Morrison. The audio can be played directly on this page, or downloaded via the "Download Podcast" link. Right clicking on that link lets me save it and load it in any audio player on the desktop. I use VLC but it's also possible to practise using the player built into the web browser by left clicking on the link.

Using the built in browser player in Firefox as an example, I can now press the play button and the audio of the broadcast plays at normal speed. This is too fast for me to keep up. By right clicking on the audio player interface I can choose "Play Speed" from the menu that pops up to produce another menu with options to play at a different speed.

Unfortunately the only slow option on Firefox is "0.5x" which is a bit too slow but it's still workable. Choosing that and starting playback will result in a pitch corrected playback at half speed. Pitch corrected means that Scotty's voice still sounds normal, not deep and "slow motion".

Now I play the audio at this slow speed and write down the words as I hear them. If I fall behind I restart the audio. If I don't know the words I just take a guess. After a couple of sentences I restart the audio and read my words as they are played. If I have a word wrong, the correct word often jumps into my head at this point when I re-hear the word being spoken. My brain seems to say "No, that's not the word, it's this one". Many repetitions of playing the audio while reading the words helps. If I still don't get the word, I just ignore it and try for context to understand what it might mean.

I don't do the entire audio - that would take too long. I just do a small portion that doesn't tire me out. Over time I can do more and more as the process becomes easier.

I try to work out what the te reo Māori means as I transcribe. I look up words I don't understand in the online Māori Dictionary or Paekupu. Doing this as I transcribes helps work out what later words are being spoken as I have more context.

Once I have a few paragraphs of transcribed audio I start playing the audio back at normal speed, reading my transcription as it goes. Then I play it back without the transcription and see what I can pick up.

Many of the broadcasts start with the same preamble. This makes listening to later broadcasts easier as I immediately know what it means. Using current news broadcasts also helps - the te reo Māori news is reporting events that I've probably heard or read about online already during the day.

The things I have most difficulty with during this process are:

• Differentiating long vowels and short vowels
• Identifying "n" vs "ng", forexample "nā" vs "ngā"
• Understanding connecting phrases like "hei te wā tata"

As an example, the first part of the news broadcast example I transcribed as:

E ngā iwi o te motu, tēnā koutou katoa, Scotty Morrison tēnei, me ngā ūpoku kōrero o te wā. Nā te pūtea tautoko a Te Māngai Pāho.

E whai ake nei e te iwi ki ngā kōrero o te wā mō te mate karauna, tekau mā toru ngā take mate karauna hou i hua ake i te tekau mā rua hāora nei i roto i o tātou hapori. Nā, hei te wā tata e tū mai nei ka mōhio tātou mēnā kei te hōrapa haere te mate karauna ki waenganui i o tātou hapori o Tāmaki puta atu ki te motu whānui me ngā tae pitopito hākinakina e whai ake nei.

Nā, ki ngā kōrero o te wā mō te mate karauna, tekau mā toru nga take mate karauna hou nā kē hī mate karauna hou i hua ake i te tekau mā rua hāora nei i roto Aotearoa. Tekau mā rua o ērā kei roto i te hapori, kotahi kei roto i ngā wāhi rāhui e noho ana. Ko te mea kei rō rāhui e noho ana i haere mai ki tēnei whenua i te tuatoru o hereturikōkā i Afghanistan mā Dubai. He tamaiti tēnei. Ko te tekau mā rua kei roto i te hapori kei Tāmaki Makaurau katoa, kāore anō hoki tētahi o ēnei kia puta ki waho atu i te rohe o Tāmaki i ēnei wiki tata nei.

Which I translated as:

Greetings everyone, this is Scotty Morrison with the main news of the time, through financial support from the Māori Broadcasting Funding Agency.

Following the news of the day about COVID-19, thirteen news covid-19 cases have appeared in the recent 12 hours within our community. So, In the near future we will know if it has spread from within our community of Auckland out to the browader country, with sports news following.

So, to the news about COVID-19, 13 new cases have appeared in the recent 12 hours in New Zealand. 12 of these  are in the community, 1 from within the quarintine place. The one from inside the lockdown came to New Zealand on the third of August from Afghanistan via Dubai. They are a child. 12 are from the community across Auckland and none have been out of the Auckland area in the last few weeks.

It's not important to be exact with the transcription or the translation. What's important is comprehending the gist of what's going on. I try not to obsess over geting things exactly right. Covering more of the audio is more important than spending all the time on a couple of sentences.

The written translation isn't really something I do as a seperate step - I just translate it in my head while reading the te reo Māori I've transcribed. I make notes of idioms or phrases that are new to me and create Anki cards for these, utilising a snippet of the audio from the broadcast.

This process has definitely helped my comprehension of the Radio Waatea news. I still struggle in real time but my hope is that consistent practice of this will continue to improve my understanding. It now makes listening to the news passively more useful to me since I understand a lot more of it whereas before I understood little except for the odd word here and there. The more mostly comprehensible input you consume the faster your comprehension skills grow.

Just a quick note about using the browser audio player vs and external player. Because Firefox only has "0.5x" as the slower speed, it's a bit too slow for me. I use VLC as mentioned earlier and this has options to slow down in increments. I try to listen about 75% to 80% speed. VLC also allows skipping back 5 seconds so I can repeat portions while I transcribe. Any audio player that allows slowing down the audio with pitch correction is useful. The pitch correction is necessary as you don't want to practice listening to artificially low pitched voices - you want practice listening to normal conversation pitch.

For other comprehension practice, I like the website Kia Marama, which has audio, transcripts and a glossary of new words to help with comprehension.

These are some notes on possessives I wrote a while back when I was attending a night class for te reo Māori. I'm publishing them here in case they're useful to someone else learning the language.

For me, describing things in terms of syntax and patterns is an easier way of learning and remembering - this is how this post on possessives is structured. Not everyone finds this to be a good way to learn - I've had comments that it's too technical - but for those that learn like me, hopefully it's helpful.

Possessives are for talking about who owns or controls something. Instead of "The Chair" or "The Chairs" possessives are for "My Chair" or "My Chairs", etc. In Māori, non-possessive usage is "Te tūru" and "Ngā tūru" for non-possessive singular and plural respectively. Using possessives it becomes "Tōku tūru" or "ōku tūru" for "My Chair" and "My Chairs". ie. The possessive word tōku or ōku replaces the use of "te/ngā".

The possessive words follow a pattern. They start with a prefix. The prefixes are marked in bold and the suffix in italics in the examples in the following table:

When I see one of "tō, tā, ō, ā" I know that something is being possessed/owned. The prefix itself has a pattern. It starts with a 't' for singular. Without the 't' it's plural. This plurality refers to the things being possessed (the chair, table, etc), not the number of possessors. This is followed by the a/o category  - see this kupu of the day page for more on categories.

Following this prefix is a suffix that identifies the possessor, and the plurality of the possessor. In the case of a singular possessor (ie. one person), there are special suffixes to learn.

They are (where '..' is replaced by the prefix above):

..ku = mine
..na = his/hers
..u  = yours

So:

For all other possessor possibilities (more than one possessor), then instead of a ku, na, u suffix we use personal pronouns (mātou, tātou, etc):

How does this work in a sentence? Replace te or ngā in the subject's noun phrase with the possessive:

In those examples I'm using the 'a' category, as pēpi goes under children from that a/o category link.

Another way of expressing possession, when the possessor is identified by a personal noun, is to use 'a' or 'o' (without the macron) in between the thing possessed and the possessor. The 'a' or 'o' expresses the a/o category of the possession and can be thought of as 'of' in English:

Discuss this post on the /r/strandedio subreddit.

Before Pitcairn Island was settled by the mutineers of HMAV Bounty and their Tahitian partners, it had been populated before by Polynesians and there are legends about the island. On arrival the mutineers found evidence of polynesian settlements in the form of marae and statues. The Tahitian women that were with them knew of the island from legends and its older name, Hitiaurevareva.

The following is a legend, from the book "Ancient Tahiti" by Teuira Henry, which tells of a chief of Hitiaurevareva living on Tahiti called Tū-i-hiti, who marries a Tahitian woman, Hau-vana'a. They leave Tahiti to go back to Hitiaurevareva to live, on the way passing a number of creatures of the sea. These same creatures are mentioned in later legends, including that of Rata and his journey to Hitiaurevareva, which I'll write about another time. Here's the legend recounted from Henry's book:

Matamata-taua and Tumu-nui of North Tahiti had a daughter, Hau-vana'a whom King Tū-i-hiti took as a wife but she did not care for him. She turned away pining for her parents, and the the parents withdrew her from him.

The love pieced the heart of Hau-vana'a and she fretted for Tū-i-hiti. And the parents said to him, "Your wife has become attached to you." And so he went to his wife, and she enquired:

"Where have you been, King Tū-i-hiti? I have been weeping for you!" The husband replied:

"Why have you been weeping for me? I remained a long time with you, and you did not speak kindly to me, so that you see the hair of my head has partly fallen out from grief. Now this is what I wish to say to you, my wife, I am taking leave of you, and am returning to my home in my country." The wife replied:

"Do not forsake me!" The husband said:

"Ah, it rests with yourself, my wife. Do you wish to go with me to my home to dwell?" The wife wept freely and she said:

"Yes, but I must first bid farewell to my parents."

So she went to her parents still in tears, and her father suspecting that her husband has beaten her said:

"Hau-vana'a, who has been beating you? You have been a princess with me, no one daring to assault you." The daughter replied:

"I have not been beaten." and she told them everything, stating that she and her husband were going away to his land, to Hiti-au-revareva. Tumu-nui replied:

"I told you, my daughter, not to spurn your husband, that he was a king from Hiti and you might thus send him back there. Now, your country men would be lost in this voyage; many are the foes of the deep. There are, Pu'a-tū-tahi, Ahifa-tu-moana, 'Are-mata-roroa, Are-mata-popoto, Pahua-nui-api-t'a-i-te-r'ai, Anae-moe-oho, Tupe-io-ahu, and 'Otu'u-ha'a-mana-a-Ta'aroa! And now my daughter, do not go; stay here with us, your parents." The daughter answered:

"I shall by no means stay." The father said:

"Will you not weep for me and your mother?"
"I shall weep, but I should weep more for my husband." she replied.

"Go" said he, "You have a royal will; you cannot be persuaded to stay." So the daughter went to her husband, and the king said to her:

"Have you properly considered the matter, Hau-vana'a, to go with me to my country?"

"I will go with you", she said, but the husband said:

"Here is what I would say to you, my wife. Stay here in your country, and behold your parents, your clan, your mountain, and hear your praises." The wife answered:

"I shall by no means stay." The husband continued:

"But no, my sister, parents and country would cause regret as soon as they become lost to you and me in the distant haze. No, my sister, your eyes then would not again see this land!"

"I will go with you!", she said. And so the husband consented, and he said to her:

"Put together our clothes and bedding."

And King Tū-i-hiti went to prepare his canoe, which was a great double one, and to take in provisions for the voyage, while his wife made preparations at home to accompany him, amid the deep regrets of her parents and all their kin and people.

The canoe was named Are-mata-roroa, and when everything was made ready, one morning King Tū-i-hiti and his queen, accompanied by their respective personal attendants, bade farewell to all in Tahiti and set sail for the far-off land.  They sailed to the south-east, bearing up against a stiff breeze, and were soon out of sight of Tahiti.

Queen Hau-vana'a was made comfortable in a cozy little thatched awning set upon planks that were fastened across the twin canoe near the bows. In attendance on her were two faithful women of her mother's retainers, and they became the more attached to one another as the sea divided them from their much loved Tahiti. The hardy men found comfortable resting places in different parts of the canoe, and everything bade fair to make their voyage a pleasant one.

They were two days out at sea, when they heard in the distance a roaring sound, and soon they saw the mid-ocean atoll, called Pu'a-tū-tahi (Hereheretue, Saint Paul Island), with the surging sea breaking in ever-varying sprays as it caught the breeze. And from amid the deafening roar, they heard a voice that came from the spirit of the coral, and the following conversation ensued:

Rock: There is a canoe approaching!
Tū-i-hiti: It is 'Are-mata-roroa. Who is that foe speaking?
Rock: It is I, Pu'a-tū-tahi.
Tū-i-hiti: Why do you roar at my canoe?
Rock: O King Tū-i-hiti, where is your wife, Hau-vana'a?
Tū-i-hiti: Here in the canoe.
Rock: This is what I have to say to you, my king, Tū-i-hiti. Throw her into the sea, to stimulate my vitals. Pain still remains in your heart from the slights that this wife has shown you.
Tū-i-hiti: Pu'a-tū-tahi, I cannot part with her! I love my wife, in proof of which she was the cause of my hair partly falling out! It was this woman! But give heed to me. Should yonder king, Tumu-nui, prepare his canoe to come for his daughter, when he arrives here where you are, hold him back.
Rock: Go on, my king.

Tū-i-hiti sailed on, and when the mid-ocean island was out of sight he saw lying on the waves Ahifa-tu-moana, and as it caused the sea to splash up into his canoe, he enquired who it was that was wetting him.

"It is I, Ahifa-tu-moana," replied the monster. And the same conversation took place between them as with Pu'a-tū-tahi, and the king was allowed to pass unmolested.

Then they met 'Are-mata-roroa and 'Are-mata-popoto, which came dashing against the canoe to break it, and Tū-i-hiti said: "Ia haehaa te pae'au 'are" (Let the billowy side come low). The wave spirits enquired after the young queen in the same manner as in the preceding interviews and received the same answer. Then the sea became calm and the canoe passed safely on.

They next saw the terrible Tridacna opened out from east to west to entrap them. But Tū-i-hiti exclaimed:

"Oh Pahua-nui-api-ta'a-i-te-ra'i! This is I, Tū-i-hiti, let me pass!" and the Tridacna also enquired for the queen, desiring to devour her, but the king refused to give her up for the reason before mentioned, and they were allowed to pass on.

Soon after this appeared the Ana'e-moe-oho, which Tū-i-hiti accosted and passed in the same way. Early one morning, the canoe approached a long rocky atoll, called Hiti-tautau-mai, of which 'Otu'u ha'amana-a-Ta'aroa was the god. The great stork approached the canoe and commenced to peck furiously at the bows. So the king said:

"O vai teie toa?" (Who is this foe?) Then they exchanged the same words, with the same result as on former occasions, and the stork left them in peace and flew away into the shoals of his lagoon in search of fish.

Finally, while the canoe was passing the angular coast of that island, from the shoals came Tupe-io-ahi, intent on seeking the life of the young queen ; but when her husband gave the beast the password, he was satisfied and let them go unmolested. Thus all the dangers of the voyage were passed, and the travellers went on their way rejoicing.

They next sighted the hilly islands of Hiti-poto (Mangareva), so called in contradistinction to Hiti-roa (old name of Tahiti), and soon entered the smooth lagoon encircled far out by a friendly reef. They were cordially received by friends known to them in Tahiti, with whom they remained several days and from whom they obtained fresh provisions.

Soon they passed an atoll named Hiti-tautau-atu (Timoe, Crescent Island) and at length they approached the shores of their destination, the picturesque and then populous little mountainous island of Hiti-au-revareva (Pitcairn Island), the kingdom of Tū-i-hiti and future home of the daughter of one of Tahiti's highest chiefs.

As the royal canoe approached the sea-beaten coast of this land, beyond the limits of the coral reef the loving subjects assembled from all directions to meet their long-absent king and new queen ; and stalwart men went out into the foaming sea to bear the canoe high on on to the shore in a little cove secure from the approach of tide and breakers. The young queen found that little island of fertile soil well filled with fruit trees, coconuts and other plants, the same as in her native land.

The happy pair were welcomed home with songs and feasts and invocations according to the custom of their time. There they lived long and happily together and had numerous issue. But they never returned to Tahiti, where the history is recorded only in legend.

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Anki is a spaced repetition learning application that is useful for helping to learn languages and other topics. In this post I'll go through how I use Anki to assist in my learning of te reo Māori. Other flashcard style applications can probably be used in a similar manner but I'm familiar with Anki and will use that in the examples.

Installing

I have the desktop version of Anki  and a mobile version installed. I created an account on AnkiWeb that allows syncing my progress between the applications. Anki is free on desktop and Android but is a paid app on iOS. It is quite pricey compared to other apps but is worth it for the use I get out of it. The money from the iOS app funds Anki development.

Create an account on AnkiWeb then install the desktop and mobile version. Log into your account on both applications. This allows synchronisation of decks between the platforms. Progress from drilling words on desktop will be reflected on mobile and vice versa. For this to work it's important to install the correct version of Anki on mobile. On iOS it's "AnkiMobile Flashcards" by "AnkitectsPty Ltd". On Android it's "AnkiDroid Flashcards" by "AnkiDroid Open Source Team".

Create your own deck

In Anki terminology a "deck" is a topic that you want to reinforce. A deck contains multiple "cards" - these are the things like words or sentences you want to practice. Cards usually are composed of a front that contains the question, and a back that contains the answer. Anki shows you the front card, you try to think of the right answer, then Anki shows you the back and you indicate if you were right by clicking a button to say if you want to do it again (ie. you got it wrong), if it was 'hard', 'good', 'easy', etc. To get the most out of Anki you should create a deck of your own.

Try to resist downloading an existing deck of te reo Māori words. Drilling words from pre-made decks gets boring fast and results in wasting time learning words you may never use. For a task like learning vocab, a pretty tedious and time consuming thing, we need to optimise the time doing it and make it as enjoyable and useful as possible.

One of the key things that helped me with using flashcards is the realisation that they are best used to reinforce concepts you already know, or have just learnt, rather than learning words and vocab that you've never come across before.

Card Tips

I find it easiest to add cards on the desktop version of Anki then synchronise it to my other devices. I add cards that contain vocab that I'm currently learning through reading books, in class, or words I want to use in my day to day. Start simple. For me I started with some basic tense structures, simple phrases, and words.

These are the types of entries I'd use for the "Basic" card type. In this card type Anki shows the front and expects the answer on the back. I also use the "Basic (and reversed)" card type. This type of card automatically adds a second card that shows the back and expects the front as an answer. This allows practising recalling the te reo Māori for an English phrase and vice versa. In that case, I word the back part of the card as a question too:

Another type of card is the "Cloze" card. This allows creating "fill in the blank" style questions where you have to recall the best word for the blank. I find this useful for learning whakataukī, karakia or recalling grammar. When adding a new card, set the deck type to "Cloze" and enter a full sentence containing the words you want to be queried on. Then highlight/select a word you want to query and click the "[...]" button in the Anki editor. This creates a cloze annotation around the word. You can cloze multiple words in the same sentence and Anki will create cards for each one. For example:

When this type of card is practised you'll see a prompt like:

Adding Audio

When adding words it helps a lot to add audio saying the word so you can learn the pronunciation. I do this by searching for the word on the online Māori Dictionary website. For example, the entry for "Te Papaioea":

Note the speaker icon to the right. Clicking that on the website plays the audio. Using the Firefox web browser you can download the audio file. It may be possible in other browsers too, but I'll demonstrate using Firefox. With the entry displayed, press Ctrl+I to bring up the media information dialog:

Click on the "Media tab" and you'll see a list of the media on the page. Look for the first ".mp3" media file. They are ordered in this list in the same order they appear on the page. So count the speaker icons down the page, and select the equivalent numbered ".mp3" entry. If it's the first word on the page with a speaker icon, it'll be the first ".mp3" - in this example "5129.mp3".

Right click on the ".mp3" line and choose "copy". This copies the audio to the clipboard. Go back to your Anki card and someone in the text field for the card, paste into it - either by right clicking and choosing paste or using a key combination like Ctrl+V. You should see a "[sound:5129.mp3]" appear, or something similar, and the sound will play. This file will be saved with your deck and synchronised. Whenever that card shows the audio will play so you can hear the correct pronunciation.

When drilling words I recommend repeating the word out loud to always practice pronunciation and to tune your ears and voice to recognise and say things correctly.

Adding Images

Another way to improve the learning process is to add images. Instead of having English on some cards I just have an image. This is to help recall the te reo Māori word based on what you see rather than translating English in your head. If you have an image on your computer you can copy it to the clipboard and paste it directly into a card.

If you don't have an image handy, try searching for the word on your favourite search engine then right click and "Copy Image", then paste it into Anki. You should use "Copy Image" and not "Copy link to image" for this to work.

Get rid of hard cards

Keep the cards simple and asking only one thing. You want the recall to be an easy, joyful, experience. Sometimes you'll hit cards that for some reason you can never get it right. Maybe it's too similar to other cards, like "poaka" for "pig" and "pouaka" for "box". Learning both of these at the same time can cause confusion. Don't be afraid to remove a card you are getting wrong all the time and add it back later. In the poaka/pouaka case, I removed one, learnt the other, then added it back.

Anki has a feature for suspending cards to make this easier. It will actually suspend cards you fail often automatically. You can do it manually from the menu when a card is shown and choose "suspend". Suspend early and suspend often. There's no point drilling cards you get wrong all the time. In your study time practice the word, try to work out why you get it wrong, then unsuspend it later.

You can un-suspend cards in the desktop version of Anki using "Browse", search for the word, right click on it and choose "Toggle suspend".

I'll often add very obvious hints to cards I struggle with. So I'd add "poaka (Not box)" and "pouaka (not pig)". This will help me get it right, and the positive reinforcement of getting it right means I learn it faster. I then remove the hint later.

Managing the Review Queue

Anki manages a "new card" queue and a "review" queue. It presents a set number of cards from the "new card" queue per day - defaulting to 20. as you get them right it adds these cards to the "review" queue for a few days down the track. If you get it wrong it adds it to the "review" queue for the next day.

If you have a lot of new cards regularly then the review queue will grow large. This isn't a problem in general. You don't need to do all words every day and you don't need to do them all at once. You can practice words a few minutes a day multiple times a day, and if you don't get the review queue to zero, no big deal, Anki takes it into account the next day.

But if you're like me and you have a need to see the numbers drop to zero because having a large queue is stressful and might make you give up, then I recommend dropping the number of "new cards" presented daily if the review queue starts to grow too big and it takes too long to do through them all.

This can be done on desktop by clicking the settings gear icon next to the deck name, and choosing "Options" in the submenu:

Change "New cards per day" to a lower level. I use "10" as my default, drop it to "5" if I get overwhelmed, and even "0" if I'm struggling. Change it as often as you need to keep from being overwhelmed.

More card tips

Once I have a bit of vocab memorised and I start feeling more comfortable reading te reo Māori, I use a monolingual te reo Māori dictionary and add sentences from it as the "question" part of a card, where the answer is the word.

For a monolingual dictionary I started with "Tirohia, Kimihia". This dictionary uses a corpus of words obtained from easier to read books, like childrens books, and the descriptions in te reo Māori are simplified. For example, the entry for "motu" is "ko te motu he whenua iti kei te moana". I'll create "ko te motu he whenua iti kei te moana" as the front of the card and "motu" as the back. I'll also do a cloze card with various parts of the sentence removed.

Another monolingual dictionary is "He Pātaka Kupu", available as a book and online. I found the entries difficult to read when I started but now I'm comfortable with reading and understanding some of them.

Don't just drill single words, add lots of sentences, questions about what you are learning, tense and grammar. If I find an interesting fact about Te Ao Māori I'll add it to my deck as well. First in English, then in Māori as I got more comfortable. Things like, "Ko wai a Hoturoa?", "Ko wai te ariki o te waka Tainui?", etc.

If I want to branch out and learn the basics of another language, I'll add entries for that language in my Māori deck. For example:

I add a "(...)" entry at the front to say that it's a non-English entry so I know the language to answer in.

In this way I reinforce my Māori learning more as I learn phrases in other languages. If I don't know how to translate it in Māori I research to find out rather than default to an English answer. See my Pronouns in Bislama post for other examples.

Consistency is key

To get the most out of Anki you need to use it every day. Work through the new cards and review queue any time you have spare time. Add news cards constantly with things you are learning and studying. Remove cards you're struggling with. Don't use a pre-made deck and it's probably best not to share your deck with others so you can add personal details to your learning. Most importantly, don't give up. If you're struggling, change the cards to be super easy, then change them back later. Good luck!

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Last year I went to Vanuatu for a couple of weeks and I picked up a some books on the language Bislama that is one of the main languages there. Bislama is a creole - a mix of European languages and the native languages of the islands. These are some notes I took of how pronouns work in Bislama compared to te reo Māori.

Bislama follows a system based on the Vanuatu native languages, similar to Māori, where the pronouns are gender neutral and they have different words depending on if the person or people being spoken to are included or excluded from the group identified by the pronoun.

Like Māori, Bislama also has different words for number of people in a plural group. Bislama differentiates singular, dual, trial, and more than three people. Bislama doesn't differentiate between subject (he/she/I) and object (him/her/me) forms of pronouns.

The following has the Bislama, followed by the Māori equivalent and then the English.

Singular

You, excluding speaker, including addressee:

Them, excluding addressee and speaker:

We, including speaker and addressee:

We, including speaker, excluding addressee:

When using the pronouns in a sentence they can be followed by a predicate marker which separates the pronoun from the verb (Bislama is Subject, Verb, Object ordered). This marker is usually i. For the olgeta pronoun, it is oli. For mi, yu and yumi there is no predicate marker.  For example:

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