To be or not to be in te reo – that is the question

In the last column, concerning the focus particle ko and the personal article a (neither of which have parallels in English), it was mentioned that one of the greatest differences between the English language and te reo Ma¯ori is that there isn’t any parallel to the English verb ‘‘to be’’ in te reo.

Most verbs in English are ‘‘doing words’’ – that is, they refer to some action or happening which is performed or done by a person, some other creature, or even an inanimate object. Thunder, for instance can rumble; water can flow.

But the term ‘‘doing word’’ is hardly an accurate description of the verb ‘‘to be’’, with its parts ‘‘am’’, ‘‘are’’, ‘‘is’’, ‘‘was’’, ‘‘were’’, ‘‘will be’’ and many more.

Any part of this verb (it’s sometimes called a ‘‘linking’’ verb) may frequently occur in a position where it links and adjective to the subject, as in ‘‘This house is good’’.

In te reo, a sentence of the same meaning would be Ka pai/te¯nei whare. The phrase Ka pai certainly translates to ‘‘is good’’ – but what should be emphasised here is that the word ka doesn’t mean ‘‘is’’.

Ka is a verb particle, one of the seven which mark the word following as a verb. Like the focus preposition ko and the personal article a, none of the verb particles are paralleled by words in English – but each has a function in determining how the verb is to be understood.

The particle ka is used when a new action is getting under way or for the future: Ka haere/au/ki te kura/a¯po¯po¯ (‘‘I will go to school tomorrow’’).

But in the sentence Ka pai/te¯nei whare, the ka doesn’t precede a ‘‘doing word’’ but a ‘‘being word’’, a word referring to a state of being. Such words are known as statives (or stative verbs), and constitute a major class of base words in te reo. In the phrase Ka haere, the verb is clearly an action verb, but in Ka pai, it is a stative.

Another stative verb, ora, means ‘‘to be alive and healthy’’.

The verb particle kia expresses a wish for something to be so, and thus the expression Kia ora might be translated literally as ‘‘I hope you’re well’’ or ‘‘Your health!’’, and is frequently used to express thanks.

Stative verbs such as pai and ora often occur also as qualifying words (or adjectives). When used in this manner, they usually follow the word they qualify: He whare pai/te¯nei (‘‘A good house/this’’).

David Ka¯rena-Holmes is a New Zealand-born writer currently living in Nelson. A tutor of grammar since the 1980s, his third book on the subject is Te Reo Ma¯ori – the Basics Explained (Oratia Books, 2020). He is examining te reo grammar in a series of fortnightly articles.