Putting te reo particles in their rightful place
Wednesday, 3 February 2021
Described in the last column were some uses of the three position particles nei, na and ra, as in: te whare nei (“the house here”); te kapu na (“that cup near you”); te maunga ra (“that mountain yonder”).
We also looked at their use in the alternative forms of phrasing: tēnei whare (“this house”); tēnā kapu (“that cup near you”) and tērā maunga (“yonder mountain”) in which these particles are combined with the definite article to form a “t-class” set of words which may serve either as determiners preceding the base (as in the above examples) or as “stand-alone” pronouns: He whare pai / tēnei. (“A good house / this.”).
These three particles also occur in several other compound words. They form, for instance, a set of words with pē – a base word meaning “like” according to Williams’ dictionary, but which is found only in the compounds: pēnei (“like this”) pēnā (“like that”, near you) and pērā (“like that”, yonder).
The words pēnei, pēnā and pērā are considered to be action verbs, an example of usage being: Kia pēnei / ta koutou inoi: (“Do like this / your prayer:” or “Let your prayer be like this:”). Like many action verbs, they can also be used as adjectives, as in: he pukapuka pēnei (“a book like this”); he manu pērā (“a bird like that one yonder”)
**READ MORE:
* Position particles put you in prime position to lift your te reo skills
* Most dialect differences in te reo consigned to history but some still remain
* When it comes to nouns, there's a definite difference between English and te reo
* Locations in time and space in te reo
**
Another set of frequently used words is kōnei (“here”, “this place”); kōnā (“that place”, near you) and kōrā (“that place”, yonder): Kei hea / tāku pukapuka? (“Where’s my book?”) Kei kōrā. (“Over there.”). A good example of this usage is found in the hymn Whakaaria mai: “Kei kōnei / au, / titiro atu ai …” (“Here am I, looking outward …”).
Further compound words include ānei (“here is” or “here are”): Ānei / ōu hū. (“Here are your shoes.”); ānā (“there is” or “there are” – near you) and ārā (“there is” or “there are” – yonder); ināianei (“now”) and ākuanei (“soon”) and even such expressions as ināia-tonu-nei (“immediately”).
Whilst nei na and ra, as separate words, are usually follow the base to which they refer, Bruce Biggs notes (in Let’s Learn Māori) that when a phrase begins with a t-class possessive, the particle nei may sometimes be pre-posed (following the possessive, but preceding the base word) as in the second line from the popular stick-game song E Pāpā Waiari: “tāku nei mahi” (literally “my here work” = “my work here”, but often translated in various manners).
The above notes certainly don’t cover all the ways in which these three particles are used, and this topic may be worth revisiting at a later stage.