Personal pronouns and possessives in te reo

Various constructions using dual and plural personal pronouns were discussed in the last column. But words other than personal pronouns are used in similar constructions.

Here are some examples: ma¯ ua/ ko to¯ ku hoa (‘‘two of us – the person in addition to myself being my friend’’ = ‘‘my friend and I’’); ko¯ rua/ko ta¯ u tane (‘‘you and your husband’’); Mere/ra¯ ua/ko to¯ na tuakana (‘‘Mary and her older sister’’); ma¯ tou/ko o¯ ku hoa (‘‘my friends and I’’); koutou/ko to¯ u whanau (‘‘you and your family’’); Hata/ra¯ tou/ko to¯ na whanau (‘‘Hata and his family’’).

These constructions are much used in te reo – and are so different from English constructions that it’s well worth putting time into practising them.

Another personal pronoun is the word wai? – which is always a question-word (and a quite different word from wai, the common word for water). Wai? is often appropriately translated by the English word ‘‘who?’’ – as in Ko wai/te¯ra¯ tangata? (‘‘Who is that person?’’). But sometimes it may need to be translated by ‘‘what’’ – as in Ko wai/to¯ u ingoa? (‘‘What is your name?’’).

It’s sometimes said that the sense of the English ‘‘What is your name?’’ is expressed in te reo Ma¯ ori by the question ‘‘Who is your name?’’. This is quite wrong, and illustrates the limitations of translation. Although wai? may often be translated by ‘‘who?’’, it is a distinctive word in its own right – which is used, in te reo, to ask questions about people. As with other pronouns in te reo, there is no subject/object distinction: Kei te ko¯ rero/koe/ki a wai? (‘‘To whom are you talking?).

In the example te reo phrases above, several words are introduced – to¯ ku, ta¯ u, to¯ na, o¯ ku and to¯u – which belong to a group identified as ‘‘t-class’’ possessives – all of which are usually translated by English possessive pronouns, such as ‘‘my’’, ‘‘your’’, ‘‘his’’, ‘‘her’’ or ‘‘their’’, signifying ‘‘belonging to’’.

The Ma¯ ori words are called ‘‘t-class’’ because when what is ‘‘owned’’ or possessed is only one person or thing, they begin with ‘‘t’’; and this ‘‘t’’ is dropped when referring to more than one: to¯ ku hoa (‘‘my friend’’) but o¯ ku hoa (‘‘my friends’’). There are also ‘‘m-class’’ and ‘‘n-class’’ possessive words, to be considered later.

A further important grammatical feature of te reo in relation to possessive words, of all classes, is that they occur in two parallel sets – one characterised by the vowel a¯ , and the other by the vowel o¯ . Next time: more about these two categories of ownership.

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.