In te reo, particles are the tricky words

It has several times been stressed in these columns that the way to fluency in using te reo Ma¯ ori must be through practice and more practice, such as is offered in Te Ataarangi classes.

But it’s also probably true that the more thoroughly an English speaker understands the differences between English and te reo, the more correct his or her use of te reo is likely to become.

The differences are particularly noticeable in the various uses of particles (or structural words) in relation to different bases (or content words) in the formation of phrases and sentences in te reo – and (although at the risk of seeming rather elementary to some readers) perhaps some careful revision might not be amiss.

A major group of structural words consists of four words defined as the articles: te, nga¯ , he and a.

The first two are definite articles: te (‘‘the’’ singular) and nga¯ (‘‘the’’ plural).

Although in contemporary English no distinction between singular and plural is made with the definite article, such distinction is common in other European languages.

In French, for example a distinction is made between ‘‘la’’ (feminine) or ‘‘le’’ (masculine) for singular and ‘‘les’’ for plural.

The plural of English nouns is most commonly shown by an ‘‘s’’ being added, but with some words – ‘‘sheep’’ and ‘‘deer’’, for instance – no change is made.

In te reo very few nouns are altered to mark plural: te whare = ‘‘the house’’; nga¯ whare = ‘‘the houses’’.

The third Ma¯ ori article – he –is called indefinite, and is often to be translated by the indefinite article ‘‘a’’ of English.

But the Ma¯ ori he is even more indefinite than English ‘‘a’’ in that it may denote either singular or plural: the phrase he whare may denote ‘‘a house’’ or ‘‘some houses’’.

The fourth Ma¯ ori article – a –is quite different. This is a word for which there is no parallel in English. It’s sometimes called the ‘‘personal article’’ because its most frequent use is in preceding a person’s name or a personal pronoun in certain contexts.

It’s used before a name when the name is the subject of a sentence – E waiata ana / a Mere (‘‘Mary is singing’’) – and before either a name or a personal pronoun, after any of the four location particles, kei, i, hei or ki : Hoatu / te¯nei kapu / ki a Mere. (‘‘Give this cup to Mary’’) Ho¯ mai / te kapu / ki a au (‘‘Give the cup to me’’).

An exception is that this article is dropped when variant forms of the first person singular pronoun (such as ahau or awau) are used: Homai / te kapu / ki ahau (‘‘Give the cup to me’’).