#13: That person is going

The present tense is indicated by using the words kei te at the start of the sentence. This can be used with a verb (walking, singing, running, eating...) to say: "at the moment, I am walking", etc.

Kei te hikoi ahau.
At the moment, I am walking.

Kei te oma koe.
At the moment, you are running.

Kei te waiata ia.
At the moment, she is singing.

What's a verb?

in English, a verb is a "doing word" which describes an action - swimming, dancing, thinking, digging, climbing, writing, reading... these are all verbs.

In te reo Māori, just like in English, there are thousand of words that can act as verbs. The word oma means to run. The word hīko means to walk. The word waiata means to sing.

Kei te verb

We can use the same sentence structure we learned in the first lesson - kei te pai ahau, I am good - with any of these verbs.

For example:

Kei te haere ahau.
I am going.

Kei te oma ahau.
I am running.

Kei te hīkoi ahau.
I am walking.

Kei te waiata ahau.
I am singing.

Kei te tū ahau.
I am standing.

Kei te noho ahau.
I am sitting.

Kei te kai ahau.
I am eating.

Kei te ako ahau.
I am learning.

Kei te pānui ahau.
I am reading.

Kei te tuhituhi ahau.
I am writing.

Kei te tākaro ahau.
I am playing.

Kei te tangi ahau.
I am crying.

Kei te moe ahau.
I am sleeping.

Kei te patu ahau.
I am hitting.

Kei te piki ahau.
I am climbing.

Kei te kata ahau.
I am laughing.

Kei te pakipaki ahau.
I am clapping.

Kei te kite ahau.
I am seeing.

And there are many, many more!

Question

And we can use the same sentence to ask a question:

Kei te waiata koe?
Are you singing

Kei te noho ia?
Is she sitting?

Many many verbs

In te reo Māori, like in English, there are many thousands of verbs: sing, hunt, run, splash, fart, trip...

For example:

Kei te hīkoi ahau.
I am walking

Kei te tākaro koe.
You are playing.

Sung, sing, sang

In English we often indicate the tense of a word - that is, whether it is past, present or future, by changing the form of the verb. For example:

I sing.
I sang.
He sings.
I have sung.
I am singing.

And so there are five forms of the word sing: sing, sang, sung, sings, singing.

Waiata doesn't change

Fortunately, this doesn't happen in Māori. For example, the word to sing - waiata - is always waiata, it never changes. I will waiata, I did waiata, he waiata, I will waiata - the word doesn't change.

Instead, we indicate the tense of the verb - that is, whether it is past, present or future - by putting a word or two before the verb. This is called a tense marker. For example, kei te which we have already met, is the tense marker that indicates that something is happening now.

Kei te waiata ahau.
At the moment, I am singing.

English verb conjugations

There are a pile of tenses in English.

 We can say thjings like:

I go
I am going
I have gone
I have been going
I went
I was going
I had gone
I had been going
I will go
I will be going
I will have gone
I will have been going

For examnple - "next year I will have been going to book club for five years".

This is complicated! Can you explain the difference between "I have gone" and "I had gone"?

Any why does the word "go" become "gone" and "went"?

This is crazy!