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"Kia maarama te reo, kia Maaori te wairua. Kia tika, kia kounga ko te koorero, ko te tuhituhi."
"Kia maarama te reo, kia Maaori te wairua. Kia tika, kia kounga ko te koorero, ko te tuhituhi."
'Let the language be clearly understood, let it be expressed with Māori ethos, let both our utterances and our writings be correct and of high quality.'
Handy Hints for learning vocabulary
Handy Hints for learning vocabulary
It helps when you are learning vocabulary to add actions to the words - the combination of an action, listening and repeating helps to cement the language into different parts of our senses.
Speaking out loud is the key - don’t slip into the habit of saying it in your head - it is important to say the word or phrases out loud as you look at the picture of the label.
Repetition, repetition, repetition - the only way the language will stick is by constant repetition! Find 10 minutes everyday to practise. Record yourself and listen back
Visual clues - stick the pictures and labels around your whare so you see them all the time, every time you see a picture, say the phrase out loud and do the action.
Keep it simple - choose two or three phrases a day. Don’t try to do all of them at once.
Play Games - make cards out of the vocabulary and play matching games with a partner. Make quizzes with quizlet so you can practise online, when you play card games count in te reo Māori. There are heaps of te reo Māori games you can buy too, so keep an eye out for them
Challenge yourself! - if you use social media, challenge yourself to post a photo a day and add a te reo Māori caption using the language you are learning.
Get te reo Māori apps to help you learn - kōrerorero, kupu. Kawe Kōrero from Waikato Regional Council also provides some key advice about tikanga and useful Tainui phrases
Join Facebook pages and Instagram pages such as Hēmi Kelly's - Everyday Māori - which is full of tips about learning the language. There are others too that have been set up as support groups for te reo language learners, but you do need to be careful sometimes of the information that is shared. Lots of people who share may not be fluent speakers or they may have personal ways of speaking which may not be grammatically correct or maybe dialectical. That is all good as language does vary, but it is worth checking in the dictionary as well.
Use Te Aka Dictionary - get the app or use it in the browser. It is brilliant and has pronunciation guides too.
Te Arapū - The Alphabet
Te Arapū - The Alphabet
The vowels in the Māori alphabet are the same but they have two different sounds each depending on whether there is a 'macron' or 'tohutō,' above the letter. (tohutō, or pōtae - "hat") are used to make the vowel longer. You may have noticed that in the Tainui dialect, tohutō are not used. Instead Tainui use a double vowel. In this article about Local Councils and their use of tohutō , especially when it comes to the names of places, Tom Roa says that all councils should be using tohutō" correctly. "Macrons or double vowels are not just pronunciation guides - they are vital to the meaning behind te reo words. For example, while o means of, the elongated ō means provisions. Three stories explain the origin of the name Ōtorohanga, Roa said, and all three refer to the stretching (torohanga) of provisions (ō)." Find out more about the use of tohutō in this article from the Spinoff. Read here about how a class of Ōmokoroa school children triumphed in their mahi to recognise the mana of a macron.
You will notice that there are fewer consonants and a couple of sounds made up of two consonants joined together (wh and ng) . Click on the images below to take you to the webpage where you can hear the pronunciation of the Māori alphabet – short and long vowels, and consonants – and of words featuring those vowels and consonants.
You can also listen to the alphabet song and sing along to practise the sounds of te arapū! The first video is a great one to use with tamariki, the second one shows the words on the screen which makes it a bit easier to sing along.
The Hokioi Printing Press
The Hokioi Printing Press
If you do a web search for why Tainui use double vowels when other iw use macrons, the top item that comes up is this from St Paul's Collegiate School
"When the first printing press arrived from England, Tainui was the first major tribe to begin printing publications. Since the printing press arrived with no macron, Tainui began printing double vowels to elongate the vowel sound, and from then on it became the formal spelling convention."
There is no reference for this, but I did hear a similar story at Te Awamutu Museum where that printing press now stands. However, there is no mention of it in the museum website nor in this document .
Pages 6 - 16 have a timeline of Māori writing conventions and influential people which makes interesting reading (if you're a bit of a geek like me!)
The quote at the top of this page is a plea from Tainui as part of their language regeneration project to get over 80% of the iwi fluent in te reo Māori by 2050. It urges people to use the reo-ā-iwi (dialect) of Tainui, and to strive to use the language accurately.
"The Key Principles of the Waikato-Tainui Te Reo and Tikanga Strategy - 'Tikanga Ora Reo Ora' encourage the use and preservation of te reo and tikanga Māori within iwi, captured in the call to action:
'Whakahokia te reo ki ngaa tara aa-whare. Haapaingia te tikanga ki te tuanui o te whare.'
'Whakahokia te reo ki ngaa tara aa-whare. Haapaingia te tikanga ki te tuanui o te whare.'
Return the language to the homes. Maintain cultural practices as a priority.
https://waikatotainui.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/waikato-reo-style-guide.pdf
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