The tense marker i te is used to say that something was happening in the past:
I te oma au.
I was running.
This indicates continuous action - I must have been running for a duration of time.
Another tense marker indicates that something happened at a particular point in time, perhaps only once. This uses i as the tense marker:
I oma au.
I ran.
The difference between "I ran" and "I was running", or "she sang" and "she was singing" can be quite subtle, but one refers to continuous action and the other refers to a particular moment in time when an event happened.
Kei te kōrero ia.
She is talking.
I te kōrero ia.
She was talking.
I kōrero ia.
She spoke.
Kei te waiata ngā tamariki.
The children are singing.
I te waiata ngā tamariki.
The children were singing.
I waiata ngā tamariki.
The children sang.
If you wrote "i te" on a bit of paper and underlined it, you would have a line. But if you write "i" on a bit of paper and underlined it,. you would just have a dot.
This is how I remember that i te indicates continuous action in the past, and i indicates one particular moment in time.
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
Fortunately, tenses in Māori are not that complicated.
Sentences usually begin with what's called a "tense marker" which tells the listener or the reader whether the things being described happened in the past, the present or the future.
Sentences that being with kei te describe actions or events that are happening at the moment:
Kei te oma ahau.
At the moment, I am running.
This is the present tense, because its happening now, and this is indicated by the words kei te.
If, however, we want to talk about something that was happening in the past, we use i te. For example:
I te oma ahau.
I was running.
I te waiata koe.
You were singing.
I te hīkoi ia.
He or she was walking.