George Heagney talks to Hone Waengarangi Morris, author of Tūmahi Māori for Manawatū Standard:
‘A Manawatū academic has published a new book to reflect the Māori way of thinking when people are learning te reo.
Dr Hone Waengarangi Morris, an associate professor at Massey University, is the author of Tūmahi Māori: A Pathway to Understanding Māori Verbs.
The bilingual book is intended to help learners deepen their understanding of the Māori language, particularly its grammar.
Morris, who has been teaching te reo for decades, got the idea after observing students who were creating sentences in Māori but following the English structure rather than the Māori one.
They often had a limited understanding of Māori verbs, or what Morris called actions.
“This is to encourage students to write and focus in structures that reflect Māori sentence structures rather than the English sentence structure.”
The actions are: actions people do by themselves such as walking, running or standing; actions that transferred to other people such as helping, singing or gathering kai; intrinsic actions of the mind and body such as thinking, understanding and feelings; actions from the perspective of the affected object or passive actions; and a state of being.
He wanted to share his understanding of grammatical structures to ensure people were accurate with what they were learning.
Morris, a licensed translator and interpretor, said passive verbs were important in Māori thinking as traditionally it was an oral language with no visual clues, so people had to listen.
“That passive language eliminates the ego. It focuses on actions rather than the person doing the action.”’
Read the rest of the article here.
