A few weeks ago I talked about kickstarting my reo.

As usual, good intentions turn to custard when other, more pressing things take over my time. So, my daily half hour has turned into a weekly, manic rush to catch up before the next webinar!

Anyway, these are my musings this week…

In this week’s mahi we had to make an image to express something about ourselves and use the structures;

Ko _________ tōku wāhi pai rawa.         My favourite place is _______.

Ko ____________ tōku papakāinga.        __________ is my home.

I had a go at saying that my favourite places were the mountains and the ocean.  I created this image;

I posted it on Twitter with my image and then when I saw a Māori colleague, I asked her if it was right. She helped me correct it to this:

Ko ngā maunga me te moana tōku wāhi pai rawa

So far so good. I will go back and edit!

Then, today, I spotted roses in my garden with raindrops on them which made me think ‘of my favourite things‘ –  “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…..”.  So I thought I would have a go…

I tried to adapt the base sentence – changing ‘wāhi’ to ‘mea’ – thing (though not sure if that is the correct word for ‘thing’ amongst the hundreds in the Māori dictionary!) and came up with this;

My favourite thing is = Ko …………tōku mea pai rawa.

Then to add ‘raindrops on roses’ – more searching in the Māori dictionary and who knows if it is right!?

Ko ngā tōuarangi ki runga i te rōhi tōku mea pai rawa

My favourite things are raindrops on roses

BUT.. then I thought, I actually want ‘things’ plural not ‘thing’ singular, so does that mean that tōku becomes ōku?  Aha! Good thinking methinks! I might be getting this, feeling a little smug!

BUT THEN …. places take ‘ō’ but things take ‘ā’ – so surely I should change it to ‘āku’ instead of ‘ōku’

Ko ngā tōuarangi ki runga i te rōhi āku mea pai rawa.

OR does the fact that they are favourite things and therefore precious make them ‘ōku’ ??

AND THEN that took me back to my original sentence about mountains and ocean and I thought, that too is plural so ‘tōku’ should be ‘ōku’.  So should my original sentence be?;

Ko ngā maunga me te moana ōku wāhi pai rawa.

My head hurts – I’m not even going to “whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens”!