E pēwhea ana koe?

Discussing how you are

There are two ways of expressing the present tense in te reo Māori which is the tense we use when asking how someone is now.

Kei te pēhea koe?

E pēwhea ana koe?

Most iwi use the words 'Kei te' followed by the adjective that describes how we are plus the pronoun - in this case as we are talking about ourselves, we use 'ahau' or 'au'.

Kei te + adjective + pronoun

E.g.

Kei te pai ahau- I am fine

Tainui

Tainui use 'E' followed by the adjective, followed by 'ana' and then the pronoun. In Tainui, it is also more common to use 'au' for 'I' than 'ahau'

E + adjective + ana + pronoun

E pai ana au - I am fine

Since we are on Tainui whenua we will use ‘e … ana’

You may also hear people miss off the ‘e’ in colloquial speech but we should use it.

Here are some common sentences you can use in response to the question 'E pēwhea ana koe?' How are you?

Keeping it simple .....

E māuiui ana au - I am sick

E ngenge ana au - I am tired

E ora ana au - I am well

E hiakai ana au - I am hungry

E hiainu ana au - I am thirsty

E hiamoe ana au - I am sleepy

E pukumahi ana au - I am busy

Kāore i te pai - I’m not good

Extending your repertoire

Ka nui te pai - Very well

E ruha ana au - I’m exhausted/run down/worn out

E kaha tonu ana - Still going strong

Kua pau te hau - Exhausted, out of breath

Heoi anō - so-so, well enough

Kāore i te pai. - not good

Kei te pokea e te mahi - snowed under lit. I am swamped by work

Te mūtunga kē mai o te pai - never better

Kei raro e putu ana - going under, can’t cope

Let's practise!

Print this sheet onto light card, or paper and laminate.

Cut up the cards so that you have a set of pictures and a set of labels. (some pictures have more than one phrase - some of these are to stretch you, so just choose one!)

Use them to practise the vocabulary

Pairs game - put all the cards out face down and turn them over to find pairs. Each time you turn a card over, say the sentence to practise
Put the label cards in a pile in the middle of the table face down. Share the picture cards out between the players. Take it in turns to turn over a card from the middle, read out the sentence, if you have the picture to go with it, you can keep it. If you don’t, ask another player ‘Kei te pēhea koe?’ and whichever player has the correct picture has to answer.
Play snap - put all the cards in a pile in the middle and take it in turn to draw out and put face up on the table. This works best with two sets of cards.

Or make up your own games …

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