Great simplicity when it comes to verb system in te reo

Wednesday, 8 July 2020

COLUMN: In English and many other languages the type of word called a verb may have several different forms according to tense, person or number.

In contemporary English, for instance, the verb “go” is “go” in the present tense, first and second person singular and the first, second and third person plural – but for some reason it becomes “goes” in the third person singular (as in “she goes”).

In earlier modern English there were even more variations, such as “thou goest” for the second person singular.

Among other changes, this verb becomes “went” in the past tense, and in the perfect tense “has gone”.

Mastering what are called the “conjugations” of verbs is undoubtedly one of the main hurdles in learning many languages – and in several European languages the verb systems are vastly more complicated than English.

The verb-system of te reo Māori, by contrast, is of great simplicity.

Base words classified as verbs do have “active” and “passive” forms – but the form doesn’t change for tense, person or number:

Ka haere / au. (“I go.”) Ka haere / ia. (“He or she / goes.”) I haere / rātou. (“They went.”) Kua haere / ia. (“He or she has gone.”). The base word haere remains the same throughout. What has been changed is the particle preceding the base word.

Verb base-words can be used without particles to give instructions:

Haere! (“Go!”) Whakarongo! (“Listen!”) but, as the examples above illustrate, different tenses can be indicated by particles accompanying the base-word to form verb phrases. There are eight particles – e, i, ka, kei, kia, kua, me, and ina (with a variant ana) – which precede the base-word; and two particles – ana and ai – which follow the base.

Because these “verb particles” are used with all verbs, mastering the verb-system of te reo mostly consists simply of understanding the function of each of these ten particles.

In the introductory pages of the current edition of Williams’ A Dictionary of the Maori Language a “Scheme of a Maori Verb” provides examples, in both affirmative and negative forms, of most types of verb phrases.

One of the example sentences shows the use of the “future precautionary” verb particle kei: Kei karanga / ia. (“Lest he should call.”).

In te reo, however, there is another word kei: a location preposition denoting “at” in present time. It is this preposition which is used widely in such constructions as Kei te haere / rātou. which might be translated word-for-word as “At the going they.” – but more naturally as “They are going.”