Hiakai means: Hungry.
I had a little spiel the other day about the prefix ‘hia-‘ so I’ll instead use today’s word as a prompt to expand on that and talk about ‘hiahia’ which is the verb for ‘to desire/want/wish for’.
This looks to me like an example of reduplication (I’m not going to post a disclaimer on every post, but I’ll periodically mention that I’m a relative beginner with te reo Māori, so don’t take this as 100% fact, this is just part of my study).
Reduplication is a feature that Māori makes a lot of use of, where a new word is derived from repeating part or the whole of another word. This can be done for a variety of purposes and often changes the meaning. Some of the uses of reduplication include:
- You can optionally reduplicate part of some adjectives when pairing them with a plural noun:
pai - good; ngā tāngata papai - the good people
- This can also be done with kino/kikino (bad), nui/nunui (big), roa/roroa (long), riki/ririki (small), rahi/rarahi (big), poto/popoto (short) and others (dictionary is best source of which words this works with)
- When verbs are partially reduplicated it can indicate:
- Reciprocity, two or more things perform an activity reciprocally: patu (strike), papatu (strike together), piri (stick/cling), pipiri (cling together)
- Or it can intensify the meaning for a single, stronger version of the verb: kimo (blink), kikimo (keep eyes firmly closed), paki (slap/pat), papaki (slap).
- Complete reduplication of the word can indicate:
- An action performed repeatedly: paki (pat/slap), pakipaki (applaud), kimo (blink), kimokimo (blink frequently)
- Several people performing the same action independently, one at a time:
- I tū ake rātou ki te waiaita - They stood up (in unison) to sing
- I tūtū mai ngā koroua ki te kōrero - The elders stood up (one at a time) to speak.
- An action is performed on a number of objects:
- Kua tīmata ia ki te kurukuru rīwai - He has started to chuck potatoes about.
- Partial or complete reduplication is used with some adjectives to weaken the meaning:
- Pango (black), papango (somewhat black), whero (red), whewhero (reddish), wera (hot), werawera (warm)
There are lots of other uses of reduplication with slightly different meanings, but the most common are plurality, intensification and weakening.