I received a text from a friend that said:

Kei te mauiui ahau.
I am located at the sick.

"Located at the sick"? What does that mean?

Well - let me tell you!

In 1969, Biggs wrote a very influntial book on the Māsori language called Let's Learn Māori.

In it, he listed the various tense markers: ka, i, kua, kia, me, and e... ana - but he didn't include kei te as the tense marker for the present tense.

When I started writing these lessons I thought - What's tyhe first thing to teach? What's the place to start? And I decided that kei te, indicating the present tense was the the most basic thing. And yet, in Bigg's book, he hardly even mentions it!

What he does, is talk about kei te as a locating, to talk about where somethgin currently is. And in chapter 30 he mentions "the pseudo-verbal continuous" with kei te. It is the pseuo-present tense. So it's not really the present tense, it is actually a locative.

Kei te says that someone or somethng is located somewhere. So if I said kei te pai ahau, it literally means "I am located at the good". And if I said kei te ora ahau, it literally means "I am located at the healthy". Of course, we wouldn't say that - we would say "I am good" or "I am well", but this is what the Māori literally means.

In the same way, if I say kei te hīkoi ahau, it literally means "I am located at the walking". And if I said Kei te waiata ahau, literally, it means "I am located at the singing". Again, we would never say this in English - we would say "I am walking" or "I am sining" but this is literally what kei te means.