Me tūtaki tāua ki te pātaka kōrero means: We should meet at the library.
I like pātaka kōrero as a kupu for the library. I’ve previously used whare pukapuka but “storehouse of stories” is great.
Te Aka records that you can refer to a person or a house as being a pātaka whakairinga kōrero “storehouse of narratives” with the difference being the inclusion of the word whakairinga, so today’s post will dig into that word a little bit.
The root of this word is the intransitive verb iri “to hang, suspended”.
Adding the prefix whaka- to the start of it gives us the transitive verb whakairi (to hang up, suspend, elevate).
The prefix whaka- is often used to mean “to cause to be” although it’s use is not entirely regular and many words formed in this way have idiosyncratic meanings of their own. Some example uses are:
From whakairi we add the suffix -nga. This is one of the nominalisation suffixes. When added to a verb, this suffix commonly results in a noun meaning the place or time of that verb occurring (although nominalisation has a variety of complex uses also):
In this case it seems that whakairinga is a place where something is suspended. A proverb which uses whakairinga in this way is used in reference to wharenui/whare tipuna where carvings and kōwhaiwhai are displayed:
So pātaka whakairinga kōrero gives the impression of a storehouse where narratives are suspended.