21 Jan 2020

Māori phrase a day with Hemi Kelly

10:04 am on 23 February 2023

Over the summer, Hēmi Kelly popped in the the Summer Times studio to give us a Māori phrase a day. They were very popular so here you can listen back to them all in one place.

Hemi lectures in Te Ara Poutama - the Faculty of Māori & Indigenous Development at Auckland University of Technology, and his book A Māori Phrase a Day: 365 Phrases to Kickstart Your Reo is out now.

Hēmi Kelly

Hēmi Kelly Photo: Supplied/Hēmi Kelly

Kei te pēhea koe?

Kei te pēhea koe? How are you? 

"It's a good follow-on from 'kia ora'", Hemi says.

"You can use it any time of the day - and quite often it's shortened to just 'kei te pēhea' - so we leave off the pronoun, 'you', and we're just saying 'how's it?'"

"'Kei te pēhea?'"

Kia pai te rā

"There's a familiar word there - 'pai' - which means 'good'", says Hēmi. "'Ra' is 'day' - so we're telling someone to have a good day: 'kia pai te rā."

It's a sentence that can be used at any time of day - and a dextrous one too.

"What we can do is take out that word 'rā' and we can put in another word."

"If we want to say have a good meeting - 'kia pai te hui'".

"Have a good trip - 'kia pai te haere'. So we can change that last word for different contexts.

"You'll normally hear it when you're saying goodbye to someone, or maybe when you're signing off an email, if it's not too late in the day."

"You can also change 'ra' for 'po', which is 'night.'"

Taihoa, kāore e roa!

"'Taihoa' means 'hang on, hold up, wait' - and 'kāore e roa' means 'I won't be long'".

"If someone's knocking on the bathroom door you can say 'Taihoa, kāore e roa! Or you could just take that first word - 'taihoa!'"

How much should we roll our 'r' in 'roa'? "It's rolled - but not THAT much", Hēmi says. "It's not a violent roll - it's a pacifist roll!"

"Everywhere the 'r' is present, it's always rolled."

Kei te hiakai koe?

Are you hungry? If we think about what we've learned already, we can start to figure out what this is asking, Hēmi says.

"The 'kei te' is the present, doing. The 'koe' is you. So we're asking you a question."

"And we've got the word 'kai' in there - a lot of us know this to be food".

"'Hiakai' is to want food, or to be hungry - so we're saying 'are you hungry?' 'Ke te hiakai koe?'"

"We put that little 'hia' in front of a noun like 'kai', we're saying 'want food' or to be hungry."

We do the same with the word 'moi' - sleep.

"'Hiamoi' - to be sleepy."

"Your answer might be 'āe' - for yes - or 'kāo' for no."

Blending the vowels in words like "koe"

"We see a lot of vowels sitting together than make one sound in Māori."

"If you're new to the language, go back to the vowel sounds: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo."

"Here we've got 'oh' and 'eh' - so we roll them together to make that sound: 'koe."'

"It's not like 'kway' - it's fluid and rolls into itself."

Haere mai ki te kai!

Haere mai ki te kai! - Come and eat!

Kei whea ngā kī?

"I use this one more than once on a daily basis," says Hemi.

The tricky 'ng' sound

"There's two digraphs in te reo Māori - the 'wh', which makes a 'f' sound - and then the 'ng', which makes the 'nga' sound."

"It's similar to the sound we produce when we say 'singer' or 'winger'' - so it's really from that part of the mouth."

It definitely is NOT a 'n' sound - unless you're from a certain part of the country, Hēmi says.

"The Tūhoi tribe don't say the 'ng' sound - they say 'na', without the 'ng'".

But what about if you're talking TO someone who is Tūhoi - is it polite, or the done thing, to ADOPT the dialectal pronunciation? 

No, says Hēmi - stick to what you know.

"If you're from a particular tribe that has a dialectal difference and you've learned it, then speak it. And if you're a speaker of the language you can easily understand anyone that speaks Māori - there are just a few preferences within different tribes. So I wouldn't say someone SHOULD talk like this - but it's up to the individual."

It's a similar situation with Ngāi Tahu folk - in the South Island, the 'ng' sound is pronounced like a 'k': 'kai tahu."

Kei te pai tō āhua

Kei te pai tō āhua - You're looking good

This is another dexterous one - used both to describe someone who's looking healthy and well, and also someone who you wouldn't mind getting to know a little better.

"The last time I used this I'd seen someone I hadn't seen in a while, they were looking really good, so I said kei te pai tō āhua - so you could be talking about the physical appearance, or someone's glow."

What if you're in the club and spot someone who you quite like the look of - can you saunter over with a cheeky wee kei te pai tō āhua?"

You sure can, says Hēmi - followed by a little wink!

He aha tō īmēra?

He aha tō īmēra? - What's your email?

He aha māu?

He aha māu? What would you like? 

e haere ana koe ki hea

E haere ana koe ki hea? Where are you going?

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