Hākari means: Feast.
It can be tricky to turn each daily kupu/rerenga into a prompt for review, so sometimes I’m going to just write about something unrelated but try to incorporate the prompt into my examples.
What I’m studying today is the use of the kupu taea (to be able to). Originally, this was the passive form of the verb tae (to arrive) but it has evolved into a separate word with a construction influenced by passives but distinct from them. Although taea can be used with other tense markers, I’m focusing on its use with the neutral tense marker ‘ka’ here.
An example use of taea with hākari could be:
Here hākari is being used as a noun, although it can also be a verb for “to feast”. The agent is marked by ‘e’ as in a passive sentence “e au” (I/me). The sentence has two subjects. The first is “te whakarite” (prepare) which has a patient “hākari” (feast). This patient becomes the second subject of the taea sentence. As in a passive construction, the subjects are not marked with i/ki joiners.
Although it’s common for speakers to use taea for requests in the format of “can you help me/are you able to help me” this is an imitation of the English pattern and is generally discouraged. Taea should be used more specifically to talk about ability or whether something can be managed, not whether someone is willing to do the thing or gives permission. Although the kupu ‘āhei’ also means “to be able” it can be used in this way with ‘ki te’ where taea should not:
Similarly to passive sentences, the agent and subject phrases can occur in any order in a ‘taea’ sentence, although not all orders are going to sound equally natural:
Of these, the first two should be preferred because if the patient or the agent are pronouns they sound more natural occurring at the start of the sentence. If you wanted to emphasise “prepare” or “the feast” you would place that phrase at the end of the sentence.
If the patient follows the action, many speakers will choose to mark the patient with ‘i’ as the object of the action. although this joiner is not required:
Finally, negating a ‘Ka taea’ sentence can be achieved by replacing “Ka taea” with “Kāore e taea”:
And just as a quick extension of that: