I am walking (kei te with verbs)

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.

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!

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?

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

For example:

Kei te hīkoi ahau.
I am walking

Kei te tākaro koe.
You are playing.

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.

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.

In this lesson we are going to look at how we say things in the past tense.

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! 

Fortunately, Māori is a lot simpler. 

In English, when we are talking about one person, we say either "he" or "she". These days, some people don't identify with a particular gender and use "they" as their personal pronun. "They" is gender neutral.

Similarly, in te reo Māori, when we are talking about another person, we use the word ia, regardless of whether they are male or female or of a different gender.

So if we say: kei te pai ia, it can mean "he or she is good"

When we are talking about more than one person who isn't me or you, we use the word rātou. For example:

Kei te tākaro rātou.
They are playing.