Today, I would like to talk about "food cooking".

In English, when we talk about someone cooking food, we would say: "Gary is cooking food." If I said: "Gary is food-cooking," it would sound a bit strange, but you would still understand what I meant. You might think: "What? He's 'food-cooking'? That's odd!"

The phrase "food cooking" is unusual in English because if you're cooking, you're obviously cooking food—so it’s redundant. We usually just say "cooking."

However, there are some compound words in English that follow a similar structure and are completely normal. For example:

• baby-sitting

• weight-lifting

• bird-watching

• horse riding

• window shopping

• firefighting

• mountain climbing

• ice skating

• people watching

• bookkeeping

• trainspotting

These are all common compound words that combine a noun with a gerund (an -ing verb) to describe an activity. But there are also many examples of this structure that sound strange in English, like:

• food eating

• clothes wearing

• car driving

• water drinking

We would never say these in everyday English because they’re overly specific or redundant. However, in te reo Māori, this kind of structure is very common and completely natural. For example, in Māori, we would say:
"Kei te tunu kai ia" – which literally means "He or she is food cooking."

This might sound unusual in English, but in te reo Māori, it’s perfectly normal and correct. Today, we’ll explore how this structure works in Māori and why it’s such an important part of the language.