Making sure the little words count in te reo

In English, there are considered to be two main types of noun: common nouns (such as ‘‘house’’, ‘‘tree’’, ‘‘bird’’), and proper nouns which give a specific name to a person, place or institution and other things (such as ‘‘John’’, ‘‘Nelson’’, ‘‘Otago’’). Proper nouns are usually identified in print by beginning with a capital letter.

In te reo Ma¯ ori, there are three main types of noun. Firstly, there are common nouns, similar in many ways to English ones, such as whare (‘‘house’’) ra¯ kau (‘‘tree’’ or ‘‘stick’’) and manu (‘‘bird’’).

Then there are personal nouns, which include names of people (eg Hongi Hika, Te Rauparaha) and tribes (eg Nga¯ puhi, Tu¯ hoe), and of other things such as meeting houses or prized possessions which have been given personal names. The personal pronouns form a subclass of personal nouns.

Thirdly. there are location nouns, comprised not only of all place names (such as names of localities, towns and countries) but also of a group of words which name specific locations in space or time – such as runga (‘‘the topside’’ or ‘‘the south’’) and raro (‘‘the underside’’ or ‘‘the north’’). The words in this particular sub-group are used in quite a different way to any words in English, and will be discussed in a separate column (as will the personal pronouns).

Nouns in te reo are classified into these three different types because they differ, one type from another, in the particles used to form phrases with them. For instance, when a personal name is the subject in a sentence, it is preceded by the personal article a: Ka ko¯ rero/a Hongi Hika. (‘‘Hongi Hika/will speak’’). This rule doesn’t apply to personal pronouns – Ka ko¯ rero/au (‘‘I/will speak’’).

In object phrases, however, introduced by kei, i, hei or ki, both personal names and personal pronouns are immediately preceded by the personal article: Ka ko¯ rero/au/ki a Hongi (‘‘I/will speak/to Hongi’’), Ka ko¯ rero/au/ki a koe (‘‘I/will speak/to you’’).

But, just to make things a little more interesting, this a is not used before variant forms of au (such as ahau or awau): Me ko¯ rero/koe/ki ahau (Should speak/you/to me = ‘‘You/should speak/to me’’).

Obviously, there isn’t any equivalent in English of this personal article. It’s one of those kupu iti (‘‘little words’’) which, as stressed by Dr Karena Kelly in her essay, Iti te kupu, nui te Ko¯ rero, are important in making te reo Ma¯ ori the distinctive language it is.

David Ka¯ rena-Holmes is a New Zealand-born writer currently living in Nelson. A tutor of grammar since the 1980s, he is the author of Ma¯ ori Language: Understanding the Grammar (Pearson), and is examining te reo grammar in a series of fortnightly articles.