Personal pronouns are the little words we use in place of personal nouns.
For example:
Some examples of pronouns in action:
I oma rātou
They ran
I te waiata rātou
They were singing
Kua noho ia
She has sat
Kei te moe au
I am sleeping
E moe ana au
I am sleeping
Ka kai ia
She will eat
In the rest of this section, we'll look at the pronouns in both languages and go through the differences between them.
In the next section, we’ll go through Māori pronouns in detail and look at some different ways of visualising them to help us remember.
Some key points.
There are:
14 different pronouns
a group of singular pronouns, which all refer to one person (I, me, you, she, he, him, her )
a group of plural pronouns, which refer to more than one person (we, us, you, they, them)
4 pronouns that refer to gender (she, he, him, her)
3 different ‘persons’ (more on this in a minute)
Some of the pronouns have two forms, for example, 'I' and 'me'.
In English we need to use the right one in different sentence structures.
For example, ‘I am eating’ and ‘Give that to me’.
Some key points.
There are:
11 different pronouns
a group of singular pronouns which refer to one person (au / ahau, koe, ia)
a group of dual pronouns which refer to exactly two people (tāua, māua, kōrua, rāua)
a group of plural pronouns which refer to 3 or more people (tātou, mātou, koutou, rātou)
no pronouns that refer to gender
4 ‘persons’ (more on this below)
None of the pronouns have 2 forms (‘ahau’ and ‘au’ are just different ways of saying the same thing)
None of the Māori pronouns refer to a specific gender. In English we have 'she', 'he', 'him' or 'her'. In Māori, we have ‘ia’.
There is only one 'form' of each pronoun. For example, in English we use 'I' or 'me', in Māori we use 'au'
The words 'au' and 'ahau' mean the same thing. They are not different forms; you can use either word in the same places within sentences
Māori has a set of 'dual' pronouns which refer to exactly 2 people. Māori ‘plural' pronouns always refer to 3 or more people.
Here is a comparison between the two languages:
To help us understand the pronouns, we’re going to start using the idea of “Speaker” and “Listener”.
The speaker is the person saying the pronoun
The speaker is talking to the listener
Anahera will be the speaker, and Sarah will be the listener
Anahera
the speaker
Sarah
the listener
We’ll need another person as well:
Maia
'Persons’ is a distinction based on who is included by a pronoun. In English, there are three, 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person:
1st person pronouns refer to the speaker (I/me) and others with the speaker (we/us)
2nd person pronouns refer to the listener (you/you) and others with the listener (you/you)
3rd person pronouns refer to any others (she/her, he/him, they/them)
In the section above, we saw that one of the differences between the two languages is that English has ‘3 persons’ and Māori has ‘4 persons’.
2nd and 3rd person pronouns are used in the same way in both languages. The difference is in the 1st person. In te reo Māori, we have two types of 1st person pronoun:
1st person inclusive
1st person exclusive
This is a big difference, and it can be tricky at first. But it boils down the fact that Māori is more precise about the meaning of ‘we’. In te reo Māori there are four different pronouns (two ‘dual’ and two ‘plural’) which can be translated into the English word ‘we'.
Look at this picture:
"We will go to the shops"
Anahera is talking to Sarah, but who is she talking about? Who is she referring to?
We know that Anahera is including herself when she says, “We will go to the shops”, the word ‘we’ always includes the person saying it (it is a ’1st person' pronoun, which means that the speaker is including her or himself). But even though Anahera is talking to Sarah, it is not clear if Anahera is saying “We, Anahera and Sarah, will go to the shops” or “We, Anahera and Maia, will go to the shops".
It is not clear if Anahera is including the listener; “We, Anahera and Sarah, will go to the shops”. Or if Anahera is excluding the listener; “We, Anahera and Maia, will go to the shops"
There is a third option in English, Anahera might be saying: ‘We, all three of us, will go to the shops'. But for now, let’s assume that she is talking about going to the shops with Sarah or with Maia
Māori does not have this problem; there are different pronouns that make it clear whether the speaker is including or excluding the listener. Compare these two pictures, Anahera is using a different pronoun in each.
“Ka haere tāua ki ngā toa"
Anahera uses the pronoun ’tāua’ which means that she is including the listener. We would translate this Māori sentence into English as “We will go to the shops”. But the word ’tāua’ expresses much more than ‘we’. A translation like, ‘Sarah, the two of us will go to the shops’ gives a more complete idea of what is being said in the picture.
“Ka haere māua ki ngā toa"
This time, Anahera uses the pronoun ’māua’ which means that she is excluding the listener. Again, we can translate this sentence as ‘We will go to the shops’. But something like Maia and I - not you, Sarah - will go to the shops’ gives a more complete idea of what is being said in this picture.
When I say, ’not you, Sarah’, this is only to help understand who the pronouns are including and excluding.
The pronouns māua (dual) and mātou (plural) don’t have any negative or unkind meaning. They don’t convey any sort of ‘not you’ in themselves, they just mean ‘we/us’ (not including the listener).
We’ve seen the differences between Māori pronouns and English pronouns. In the next section we’ll go through the Māori pronouns in detail.