In this lesson, we are going to look at the question: "Why?"

We do this with the phrase:

Ha aha ai?
Why?

This is similar to he aha - "what?" - but it has the ai included.

So, if someone says they are going to do something, you can ask:

Ha aha ai?
Why?

But we also want to be able to ask a more complicated question: "Why did you go?" or "Why did you do that?"

To do this we use the fomular:

He aha [who] i [what] ai?

Or:

He aha [subject] i [verb] ai?

For example, if we want to say, "why did you go?" the "who", or the subject is "you", which is koe in Māori if we are talking to one person. And the "what", or the verb, is "go", or haere.

 So we would sayL

He aha koe i haere ai?
Why did you go?

The i in this sentence indicates that we are talking about something in the past. Why did you go, rather than why aren't you going or why won't you go in the future. And we should be familiar with the use of i to indicate the past - in i haere au, "I went", for example, or i tērā tau, "last year" (as opposed to a tērā tau, which is "next year").

So, he aha koe i haere ai, means "why, in the past, did you go?"

And, of course, we can substitute haere with any other verb:

He aha koe i waiata?
Why did you sing?

He aha koe i oma?
Why did you run?

He aha koe i kōrero?
Why did you talk?

He aha koe i hīkoi?
Why did you walk?

He aha koe i kai?
Why did you eat?

Similaerly, we can change the subject of the sentence - the person we are asking about.

Instead of:

He aha koe i waiata?
Why did you sing?

We could ask:

He aha ia i waiata?
Why did he or she sing?

So we could ask:

He aha au i haere?
Why did I go?

He aha ia i oma?
Why he or she run?

He aha tātou i haere?
Why did we go?

He aha rātou i hoki?
Why did they return?

And, of course, we can also use a person as the subject:

He aha te wahine i waiata?
Why did the woman sing?

He aha ngā pirihimana i oma?
Why did the police officers run?

He aha ngā tamariki i tākaro?
Why did the children play?

He aha te kurī i oma?
Why did the dog run?

This can seem frustrating because words seem to have multiple meanings. He aha means what, but then he aha means why?

And we learnt that ai means "in order to do something", and now it means why. 

But, actually, this makes perfect sense!

He aha means "what" and ai is the particle of reason. That is,  it indicates the reason for an action. I am going to the market in order to buy food: hoko kai ai. Food buying is the reason. So ai gives the reason.

So asking he aha ai, literally means "what is the reason"?

So if I ask he aha koe i haere ai? I am asking, literally: what you went the reason? Or: what is the reason for you going? Or: why did you go?

You may think that asking "why" is fairly straightforward and simple! However, there are actually six different "why" questions:

Why didn't?
Why aren't?
Why won't?

These are "why" questions for past, present and future. And then there are three negative "why" questions:

Why didn't?
Why aren't?
Why won't?

For example:

Why did you leave me?
Why are you being so mean to me?
Why will you block me on Messenger?
Why didn't you tell me how you felt?
Why aren't you talking to me?
Why won't you come back to me?

The future "why" question is pretty much the same as the past "why" question, except that instead of i, we use e. For example:

Why did you go is he aha koe i haere koe?

But why will you go is:

He aha koe e haere ai?
Why will you go?