“I am good!”
Adjectival Sentences part 1
An “adjective” is a word which describes how something or someone is. For example: good, bad, happy, sad, hungry, thirsty, red, yellow, fast, slow, hot, cold, sleepy or angry.
An “adjectival sentence” is one in which someone or something is described. For example:
I am good.
You are hungry.
He is angry.
John is fast.
Mary is sad.
We are sleepy.
That car is red.
In te reo Māori, the most common adjectival sentence is:
Kei te pai.
Good!
The first two words, kei te, mean “at the moment”.
The word pai means: “good”.
And so kei te pai means, literally, “at the moment, good”. Or “I’m good” or “things are good at the moment”.
However, often people will add an extra word to the sentence to say “I am good”:
Kei te pai ahau.
I am good.
Kei te means “at the moment”, pai means “good”, and ahau means “I”.
Literally, kei te pai ahau means “at the moment, good, I”. But, of course, that’s not how we would say it in English.
Another way of saying the same thing is:
Kei te pai au.
I am good.
The words ahau and au both mean the same thing: “I”, and so they are interchangeable. You can use whichever one you want. Kei te pai au and kei te pau ahau mean the same thing.
Another common sentence that describes how you are is:
Kei te ora ahau.
I am well.
The word ora means “healthy” or “well”. You almost certainly know this from the common greeting kia ora.
Kia ora!
Be well!
The word kia means “may you be” and ora means “well”, so kia ora means “may be you be well”.
We meet the word kia is another common expression:
Kia kaha!
Be strong!
Again, the word kia means “may you be”, and the word kaha means “strong”, so kia kaha means “be strong!”
We could use the word kaha in an adjectival sentence to say how we are feeling:
Kei te kaha ahau!
I am strong!
The words kei te mean “at the moment”, kaha means “strong” and ahau means “I”. So kei te kaha ahau means “I am strong!” If we go back to our previous sentence – kei te ora ahau – we can see that it means “at the moment, I am well”. Kei te means “at the moment”, ora means “healthy or well” and ahau means “I”.
Kei te ora ahau.
I am well.
However, maybe you aren’t merely healthy or good. Maybe you are very healthy or very good. You can say:
Kei te tino pai ahau!
I am very good!
The word tino means “very”. And so… kei te means “at the moment”, tino means “very”, pai means “good” and ahau means “I”. Kei te tino pai! – “I am very good!”
But maybe you aren’t good or very good, maybe you just a little bit so-so. Maybe you’re just OK. You can say:
Kei te āhua pai ahau.
I am somewhat good.
The word āhua means “somewhat” or “a little bit”. So kei te āhua pai ahau means “I am somewhat good” or, we would probably more commonly say: “I’m OK”.
There are, of course, any number of ways that you could be feeling or words that you could use to describe yourself.:
Kei te ngenge ahau.
I am tired.
The word ngenge means “tired”. If you are very tired you could say:
Kei te tino ngenge ahau.
I am very tired.
Or:
Kei te āhua ngenge ahau.
I am a little bit tired.
If you are hungry, you could say:
Kei te hiakai ahau.
I am hungry.
The word hiahia means “to want” and, when put at the start of a word, hia- also means “to want something”. The word kai, you probably know, means “food”, and so hiakai means “to want food” – or to be hungry.
If you are very hungry you could say:
Kei te tino hiakai ahai.
I am very hungry.
However, you could also say:
Kei te matekai ahau.
I am starving.
The word mate means to be “sick” or “dead”. And, of course, kai means “food”, and so matekai, literally, means “food sick” or “food dead”, or “starving”.
Incidentally, you may be tempted to say mate like “mah-tay” (or even like the English “gidday mate!”) but it is pronounced ma-teh. The “te” is like the “tent” without the “nt”.
Similar to hiakai, to want food, or to be hungry, is the word hiainu. The prefix hia-, we know, means “to want something”, and inu is the word for drink. So hiainu means to want drink, or to be thirsty. So, you could say:
Kei te hiainu ahau.
I am thirsty.
Similarly, you could use the word mateinu. Again, mate means “sick” or “dead” and “inu” means “drink”. So mateinu means to by dying of thirst, or “parched” or “extremely thirsty”:
Kei te mateinu ahau.
I am extremely thirsty.
There are, of course, hundreds of words you would use to describe how you are feeling. Here are some common ones:
Kei te harikoa ahau.
I am happy.
Kei te riri ahau.I am angry.
Kei te pukumahi ahau.
I am busy, or hardworking.
Kei te wera ahau.
I am hot.
Kei te makariri ahau.
I am cold.
Kei te āwangawanga ahau.
I am worried.
And, of course, you can use tino or āhua with any of these words:
Kei te tino āwangawanga ahau.
I am very worried.
Kei te āhua āwangawanga ahau.
I am somewhat worried.
So far, we have looked at sentences that a person can use to describe how are they feeling (“I am good”, “I am happy”, “I am hungry”), but we can also change the sentence slightly to say how someone we are talking to is:
Kei te pai koe.
You are good.
The word koe means “you”, when talking to just one person.
Even though koe is one of the most commonly used words in Māori, it is a bit tricky to pronounce. It is said like “queer” without the “r” on the end – like “que“. Some people say it like “kway”, which is fine, except that you should say this as quickly as you can, so that it doesn’t rhyme with “sway”, which would give it a long “ay” sound. The vowels are said faster this. So you can say “que” (“question” without the “stion”) or say “kway” as fast as you can!
You can also use this to ask someone a question:
Kei te pai koe?
Are you good?
Kei te ora koe?
Are you well?
Kei te hiakai koe?
Are you hungry?
Kei te riri koe?
Are you angry?
We can also make a comment about how someone else is. For example:
Kei te pai ia.
He or she is good.
The word ia can mean either “he” or “she”.
So we can say the following:
Kei te pai au/ahau.
I am good.
Kei te pai koe.
You are good.
Kei te pai ia.
He/she is good.
We also talk about someone using their name:
Kei te pai a Rangi.
Rangi is good.
The word a in this sentence is a particle, or a very small word (like a particle of sand). Māori has a great many particles and they are used much more than in English. Learning Māori relies very much on knowing how to use these particles.
This one, a, is used before a person’s name. We cannot say “kei te pai Rangi” – this is grammatically incorrect. Instead, we need to put the particle a before this, and any other name:
Kei te pai a Mere.
Mere is good.
Kei te pai a Hēmi.
Hēmi is good.
We can make out sentence a little more complicated by saying:
Kei te pai a Hēmi, kei te harikoa ia.
Hēmi is good, he is happy.
To go through this sentence: kei te means “at the moment”; pai means “good”, a Hēmi means “Hēmi”; kei te means “at the moment”; harikoa is the word for “happy” and ia is the word for “he” or “she”. However, since we know that we talking about Hēmi, we know from the context that, in this sentence, ia means “he”.
So far we have just used the words kei te, which is the present tense, or refers to how things are at the moment. We can also talk about how things were in the past (“yesterday I was sick”), or the future (“tomorrow you will be tired”).
We know that kei te pai ahau means “at the moment, I am good”. We can also say:
I pai ahau.
I was good.
In this sentence i means “in the past”.
We can also say:
Ka ora ahau.
I will be well.
In this sentence, ka means “in the future”. (We can remember this because when the Europeans arrived in Aotearoa, cars were in their future!)
We can, of course, use i and ka with any of the other adjectives we have learned:
Ka harikoa ahau.
I will be happy.
For example, we can say:
I pai ahau.
I was good.
Kei te pai ahau.
I am good.
Ka pai ahau.
I will be good.
I harikoa koe.
You were happy.
Kei te harikoa koe.
You are happy.
Ka harikoa ia.
He/she will be happy.
I hiakai a Rangi.
Rangi was hungry.
Kei te hiakai a Mere.
Mere is hungry.
Ka hiakia a Hēmi.
Hēmi will be hungry.
There are some resources that have been created for this lesson.
Firstly, there are flash cards for you to learn the words for this lesson.
Secondly, there is a page that shows all the sentences that can be created using the vocabulary in this lesson.
Thirdly, there is a vocabulary list which includes all the words. (Of course, these lists will become more extensive in subsequent lessons!)
Fourthly, (and this is my favourite way to learn!), there is a word game that uses all the words from this lesson – you have to guess the right word (and it gives you a score!).
Finally, if you are working in a class or in a group, there are resources for this lesson that you can print out and use.
Good luck on your te reo journey.
You will be able to continue with lesson 2 shortly!