a simple sentence
David Kārena-Holmes is a Nelson-based author and academic
COLUMN: An English-speaking learner of te reo Māori is faced, certainly, with acquiring a vocabulary of words which may be unfamiliar – but a greater difficulty is acquiring a good understanding of the differences between the languages in the manner in which sentences are constructed.
The magnitude of these differences is indicated by the fact that early attempts in the 19th century to explain the grammar were quite confusing.
In both A Grammar and Vocabulary of Language of New Zealand (1820) by the linguist Samuel Lee of Cambridge University (with whom the missionary Thomas Kendall and Ngāpuhi Rangatira Hongi Hika collaborated) and in Robert Maunsell’s Grammar of the New Zealand Language (1842) the authors openly admit the inadequacy of their explanations.
It wasn’t until 150 years after the publication of Lee’s book that the real “break-through” to better understanding of Māori grammar came with the “entirely different grammatical theory” and “much simplified system of classification” presented in Bruce Biggs’ Let’s Learn Maori of 1969.
Link to article: Constructing a simple sentence | Stuff.co.nz
