2012年7月27日金曜日

Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori & Maori Greetings and Pronouns



This week is Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Maori Language Week) in New Zealand. Te Wiki was started as part of the Maori language revival movement. The week is dedicated to raising awareness for the language and encouraging the general public to become interested in learning Maori.
As part of Te wiki o Te Reo Maori, I thought I would write some stuff about the Maori language. Since there are many places on the internet which teach the very basics of Maori and little else, I thought I should include something else too.

Basic Maori 1: Saying Hello

There are four ways to say “hello” in Maori. The first is the Maori equivalent of “hi,”

Kia Ora 

If you want to be a little more formal, you can say one of the following depending on how many people you're saying hello to:

Tēnā Koe (1 person)

Tēnā Kōrua (2 people)

Tēnā Kōtou (3 or more people)


Yes. “Hello” has three forms in Maori. This is because Maori pronouns have singular, dual and plural forms.
Note: Maori greetings are also used to say “thank you.” This unusual part of the language results from a lack of a word for thank you in traditional Maori! This is because in traditional Maori culture, “thank you” was said with actions rather than words. And so prior to European contact, Maori considered using words to thank someone redundant.

Basic Maori 2: Pronouns

Maori pronouns are very different from English ones. As I mentioned above, Maori pronouns have singular, dual and plural forms. Maori pronouns also differ whether the speaker is referring to themselves, the listener(s) or other people, much like English. Unlike English however, Maori pronouns make no distinction between male and female. Maori pronouns are best summarized in the table below:

Speaker but not listener
Listener but not speaker
Speaker and listener
Neither speaker nor listener
One person
Au/Ahau
Koe
-
Ia
Two people
Māua
Kōrua
Tāua
Rāua
Three or more people
Mātou
Kōtou
Tātou
Rātou

0 件のコメント:

コメントを投稿