Tamawāhine # 1: "Can you not speak #TeReoMāori like you're giving a class to 30 children? It's annoying! "
🤣

Argh! A brain in the grip of man flu cannot grok negative action statements in #TeReoMāori

But despite Māori Made Easy being so good, after three weeks I'm coming to grips with the bleedin' obvious: just listening once to each 15 minute minute bite won't install #TeReoMāori in my ageing brain (although my kids seem to lux it up just fine!).

Thinking I gotta revise on the weekends, and/or find another 15 minute slot in each day, and maybe re-listen to the lesson from a fortnight ago to stop it from all slipping away into the forgetful fog!

Scotty and Stacey Morrison's "Māori Made Easy" audio book has a great structure: weekly 'lessons' broken into five 15 minute bites. I can play a bite over breakfast every week day, and get through a #TeReoMāori lesson a week.

The pace is pretty good too, with lots of patient repetition in Scotty's encouraging tone.

New favourite word in #TeReoMāori: ngenge

So Huka Falls is Sugar Falls?
(Tryna remember my #TeReoMāori vocab)

So if kotahi is "only one" does that mean the NZ Transport Agency's name in #TeReoMāori, Waka Kotahi, means "Only Cars"? 🤔

Huawhenua = earth fruit = vegetables, neat!
#TeReoMāori

Ok, well on Monday I thought week 2 of #TeReoMāori, with cardinal/ordinal numbers, "how many" questions etc. was gonna be easy.

On Friday, none of it has stuck, and tamawahine # 2 keeps correcting me! Back to the drawing board...

The advantage with an audio book is I can just do week 2 again next week - no rush, eh?

Ah huh. In #TeReoMāori tangata whenua is "people of the land", but just "people" is tāngata with a long ā at the start!

Stop! The numbers hurt my brain!
#TeReoMāori

#TeReoMāori uses decimal - i.e. there are digit names for 1 to 10, and after that it's multiples of 10 plus a digit - tekau mā tahi ... rua tekau mā iwa, etc.

Given that, historically, different cultures have landed on different counting systems - we're used to base ten and tend to think it's obviously the best, but other cultures at other times have used base 8, 12, 20, etc. without problems - is it weird that Māori landed on 10 too?

I remember learning that Rangitoto meant "red sky".

But now I'm discovering it's actually "blood sky", which is frankly a lot more evocative!

#TeReoMāori is poetic!

My girls aren't growing up in NZ, so it's up to me to transmit to them my (Pākehā) culture which includes the traces of Te Reo I got growing up. I taught them one of the only Māori kids' songs I could remember - "Motokā iti rawa ē" - about driving a wee car around town.

It's a fun song, and the girls have always called their little buggy they rode around on (still ride, despite being too big!) the motokā iti.

But this week, I learned that in #TeReoMāori waka might be better to use than motokā!

It's the end of week 1 on the #TeReoMāori journey. Scotty Morrison's friendly tones are now a regular feature of our mornings. Lot's of pronunciation practice with long vowels and "ng". Favourite word so far is ngārara (bug) - I like the mouthfeel.

I can't get this week's proverbs/sayings to stick in my brain, will need some repetitive rote learning.

There's lots of morning routine vocab floating around our house tho: e oho, maranga, waku niko, parakuihi, kia tere!

In the dead of night, tamawahine # 2 got up to go to the bathroom, and took great pleasure in telling me off for still being on my phone, whispering "kāti te raweke hangarau" in the darkness with a giggle.
My paltry #TeReoMāori is already being used against me!

TIL my pronunciation of Otautahi (Christchurch) has been really really bad.
#TeReoMāori

I've got Scotty Morrison's Māori at Home too, product of last year's Māori Language Week good intentions.
I never used it then, but now I'm tryna pick up phrases I can use every day to keep my head in the game.
So far: Kāti te raweke hangarau - "stop fiddling with that device" (and come eat your breakfast) is getting enough traction to be recognised by daughter # 1
#TeReoMāori

It's embarrassing how long it's taken me to start learning #TeReoMāori. I don't live in Aotearoa so can't just go do a course, but that's no excuse in the 21st century what with the internet and all that.
After looking into some online courses I finally just bought the audio book version of Scotty Morrison's Māori Made Easy, and installing the Te Ara dictionary app on my phone.
So here we go!

Kua kite tāku wahine ki te pungawerewere, ā, kua kawe ahau i te pungawerewere ki waho.

#TeReoMaori

Those of you who speak it better than me please feel free to correct my grammar.