2012年11月19日月曜日

Hatsu Yuki

Snow has started to fall in here in Kitami.

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

2012年7月2日月曜日

工大祭 - Koudai Matsuri

It's definetly summer now in Kitami and this weekend, the univerity in my city, Kitami Institute of Technology, held a festival. My coworker and I went down on the second day of the event.

Like most school and university festivals, this was a good opportunity to see some of the research done at the uni and many clubs put on perfomances or had stalls out. There were also some performances and stalls from outside groups. Some of the groups of international students also had some stalls selling food from their countries.

Taiko drums. Damn they're loud.

This is what happens when you get your specatators to join in your performance. XD

I got my first taste of yosakoi dancing, a highly energetic dance style that originated in Kochi prefecture in the 1950s. The dancing is a combination of modern and traditional dance forms. For the second dance, the yosakoi team asked for people from the audience to join in, at which point about half the crowd tried to run away! The team eventually got enough volounteers. You can see the result above.

Since it was a matsuri, I decided to wear my yukata. It may seem a bit strange for a guy to wear a yukata, but it tends to go down very well with the Japanese when they see you wearing one. I was happy to learn that I wasn't the only one wearing a yukata, or a kimono for that matter. As well as some Japanese girls wearing yukata, some Chinese students were wearing furisode kimonos. I'm not the only one who was saying that they looked fantastic.

Summer has really begun here now. There wil be many more matsuri to come.

2012年6月19日火曜日

Matariki. He tau hou, he Blog hou

Kia ora. Tēna koutou. Haere mai ki te tāku Blog.

Hello people who have found this blog and haven't been scared off by the strange words in the title.

I've been wanting to try writing one of these for a while now and Matariki seems like as good a time as any. I like the idea of a place to express my views on various topics such as languages, culture, living in Japan, science and many others. I also want more of an opportunity to practise my Māori and teach some of this language and possibly others.

I'm not entirely what else to say here and a four line post saying something like “Blah! New person starting a new blog!” seems like a waste of time to me so I thought I would talk about Matariki; One reason for me to start this blog now.

Matariki – The time of new beginnings (Matariki – Te wā ō tīmatanga hou)

Matariki is the Māori name for the Pleiades star cluster. The rising of Pleiades in late May – early June marks the start of the Māori new year, also called Matariki.

In earlier times, Matariki was a time of celebration and preparation for the new year. The harvest had generally finished by this time and food was plentiful. The season was also less busy than others, allowing time for teaching and learning.

Matariki has been recently revived as a nationwide celebration. In modern times, Matariki is intended to be a time for reflection on our place in the world and for new beginnings. Much like the “Western New Year” (i.e. January 1^st) and the beginning of the new year in other cultures, some say this is a time to try something new, learn a new skill, or revive one you haven't used for some time. Matariki is also used to promote Māori language and culture.

Matariki celebrations seem to be becoming increasingly popular and efforts have been made to make it a national holiday. This year, Matariki starts on June the 21^st but celebrations have already begun in Auckland at the Auckland Matariki festival as you can see in the news story by Te Karere News below (in Māori).