E whai ake nei, coming up, more on particles in te reo

Friday, 8 January 2021

Those who follow our television news on channel 1 will no doubt have noticed over the past few months that presenters Simon Dallow and Wendy Petrie now regularly introduce items which are to follow the advertising breaks with a sentence such as E whai ake. or E whai ake nei. (“Coming up.”).

These are both single-phrase sentences, each composed of a base word – whai (“to follow or pursue”) accompanied by particles (“structural words”).

The central principles governing the structure of sentences are that a sentence consists of one or more phrases; that each phrase consists of a “nucleus” of one or more base (or “content”) words, and that there may be one or two particles preceding and/or one or more particles following this nucleus.

This results in the particles, as a broad class of words, being considered in two main groups: those which precede the nucleus (“pre-posed particles”) and those which follow it (“post-posed particles”) – with a few exceptions of words which may occur in either position.

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The particle ake (in the newsreaders’ sentences) is one of a neat group of four post-posed “direction” particles: mai (“towards the speaker”) atu (“away from the speaker”) ake (“upwards”) and iho (“downwards”). The uses of these particles are probably less confusing than is the case with several others, but there are still variations to consider.

The particle mai is well-known in the traditional call of welcome Haere mai! (“Move this way!” or “Come here!”). Haere atu! has the opposite meaning: “Go away!”

But it’s common in te reo for almost any action to be given a directional sense, even where this isn’t considered necessary in English: Whakarongo mai! (“Listen!”). And atu has a range of different uses, as for instance in the expression Tino pai rawe atu! (“Far and away good!” or “Far out!”). The particle ake also has meanings of wider scope than simply “upwards”. It may signify “onwards” or “forever”.

There are three words – hōmai (“give here”), hoatu (“give away”) and hoake (“give or bring to some other place” or “go onwards”) – which are unusual in that they are formed by the combination of directional particles with a base word not found independently.

It should also be noted that whilst the passive form of a verb is often used as command or instruction – as in Katia / te kūwaha! (“Let the door be shut!”) – these three words – hōmai, hoatu and hoake – commands or instructions though they may be, are only rarely, if ever, given passive endings.

Te Ataarangi students can get good practice using hōmai and hoatu: Hōmai / te rākau whero! (“Give me the red stick!”)