daily-reo

Kaiako means: Teacher.

I discussed the prefix “kai-“ in an earlier post, so I’m taking this as a prompt to continue discussing kupu wetereo (grammar words), using the mention of prefixes as a starting point.

The kupu for “prefix” is “pīmua”, “kūmua” or “kuhimua”. The kupu for suffix is “pīmuri”, “kūmuri” or “kuhimuri”. We can see the words “mua” and “muri” in here which are the locative nouns for “before” and “after” respectively. The kupu “kū” on its own means “syllable” while “kuhi” means “affix” which is the class of words that prefixes and suffixes belong to.

Speaking of locative nouns, the kupu for “locative noun” is “tūwāhi”. These are our terms such as:

• mua (in front, before)
• muri (behind, after)
• runga (on, above)
• raro (under, beneath)
• roto (inside)
• waho (outside)

A “wāhi” is a place or location, with this term appearing in another kupu wetereo “rerewāhi” (locative sentences). It also appears in the term for locative articles “pūwāhi”:

• pūwāhi takitahi (singular) - tēnei, tēnā, tērā
• pūwāhi takitini (plural) - ēnei, ēnā, ērā

Some other key kupu wetereo include:

• pūingoa (nominal particles) - he, te, ngā (these are also “pūtohu” or “articles”)
  • he is the pūnoa (indefinite article) meaning “a” or “some”
  • te/ngā are the pūmau (definite articles) meaning “the”
• pūmahi (verbal particles) - i, kua, ka, kia, e, e…ana, e…ai, e…nei/nā/rā, kei te, i te, me, ai, kei, ana, ki te
• pūhea (positional particles) - nei, nā, rā
• pūhono (preposition) - ko, me, mā, mō, nā, nō, ki, i, kei, hei, a, o
• tūpātai (interrogative, question word) - aha, wai, hia, hea, nahea, pēhea, tēhea
• rerenoa (descriptive sentences)
• rerepātai (interrogative sentence)
• rerewhakahau (command sentence, imperative sentence)

I’m hoping to use more of these kupu when discussing reo Māori grammatical constructions. Not least because I’ve picked up some new pukapuka from Te Wānanga o Raukawa which are i roto i te reo Māori anake and I need to get into the habit of discussing grammar in these terms.