The good woman is singing - subjects with adjectives

In English, we can use "and" to talk about more than one person: "Peter, Paul and Mary".

In te reo Māori, there is a specific way to do this.

When there are only two people, and we are talking about people other than ourselves, we use rāua ko:

Kei te haere a Rangi rāua ko Hemi ki te papa tākaro.
Rangi and Hemi are going to the playground.

Ko Brian rāua ko Fran ōku mātua.
Brian and Fran are my parents.

Where there are more than two people, and we are talking about poeple other than ourselves, we use rātou ko... ko...

Kei te waiata a Peter, rātou ko Paul ko Mary.
Peter, Paul and Mary are singing.

When you are speaking about yourself and someone else, we do not say "me". Intead, you would use māua ko if you are just talking about you and another person, and mātou ko... ko... if you are talking about you and two or more other people:

I taraiwa māua ko taku hoa.
Me and my friend drove.

Māua ko Amaru.
Amaru and me.

Mātou ko tōku whānau.
Me and my family.

I haere mātou ko Rangi ko Hemi.
Me and Rangi and Hemi went.

We  have met adjectives before, in lesson one, when we learnt things like: 

Kei te pai ahau.
I am good.

And:

Kei te ora ahau.
I am well.

The words pai and ora are adjectives.

We have also learned sentences like:

Kei te waiata te wahine.
The woman is singing.

And:

Kei te oma ngā kurī.
The dogs are running.

We can now add an adjective to one of these sentences.

We can say:

Kei te waiata te wahine pai.
The good woman is singing.

And:

Kei te oma te tane ora.
The well man is running.

In English, we say things like "the clever woman", "the blue house" and "the bad dog". In Māori, like many other languages, the adjective comes after the noun. We would therefore say: "the woman clever", "the house blue" and "the dog bad".

We therefore say: te wahine pai (the woman good) and not te pai wahine.

So we can put an adjective after the subject of the sentence - that is, the person doing the action:

The good man is reading a book.
The clever woman is swimming in the sea.
The noisy child is eating an icecream.

But we can also add an adjective after the object of the sentence:

The good man is reading a boring book.
The clever woman is swimming in the rough sea.
The noisy child is eating a delicious icecream.

For example:

Kei te moe te pēpi iti i te moenga mahana.
The small baby is sleeping on the warm bed.

Kei te waiata te tama toa i te waiata roa.
The brave boy is singing a long song.

Kei te kai te tamaiti hiakai i te āporo whero.
The hungry child is eating a red apple.

Kei te horoi te kōtiro pai i te motokā paru.
The good girl is washing the dirty car.

Kei te tākaro te kurī hari i te rākau poto.
The happy dog is playing with the short stick.

What if we want to talk about someone doing something. What is Mere is singing or Rangi is going?

If Māori was like English, we could jsu say "kei te waiata Mere" or "kei te haere Rangi". But Māori has a small word, a particle, that English doesn't havce called the "personal article".

This is the word "a" and it goes before a person's name.

So, to say that Mere is singing, we need to say:

Kei te waiata a Mere.
Mart is singing.

And to say that Rangio is going, we say:

Kei te haere a Rangi.
Rangi is going.