A 60–80 word email to a host whānau in Whakatāne
Tui is one of 12 students from her kura going on a four-day exchange to Whakatāne. Her teacher requires a short email in te reo Māori to her host whānau - Whaea Mere and Matua Hōri, a couple with no children at home - of 60 to 80 words. It must greet them, confirm that she arrives on Friday at 3.00 pm, thank them, and ask whether she needs to bring a sleeping bag. No English is allowed except names. Her draft is 95 words long. It begins 'Tēnā koutou e Mere mā', says 'Kei te tae au ā te Rāmere, ā te toru karaka', spells the town 'Whatakane' throughout, and includes two sentences explaining the bus timetable plus one about her netball team. Her teacher says three fixes will get it to standard before she sends it.
1. Which greeting should Tui use, and how does the number of recipients decide it?
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Two recipients takes the dual: Tēnā kōrua. Koutou is for three or more, so Tēnā koutou e Mere mā over-counts the household and looks careless in a first approach to hosts. Mā after a name (e Mere mā) implies 'and the others', which is loose here; for a couple, Tēnā kōrua alone, or E Mere, e Hōri, is cleaner. The deciding factor is genuinely the number of people being addressed, so the greeting would change if cousins or boarders were also at home - then koutou becomes correct. Because the email is short and in te reo only, a precise dual greeting is the cheapest way to show the hosts that Tui has noticed who she is writing to.
2. Rewrite the arrival sentence and justify each element you change.
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Kei te tae au is present progressive - 'I am arriving (now)' - which is wrong for a Friday in the future. Use ka + verb with a future time: 'Ka tae atu au ā te Rāmere, ā te toru karaka.' Three points: (1) ka marks the event as one that will happen, not one in progress; (2) ā te marks future time, whereas i te would put it in the past; (3) atu because she is travelling away from where she is now towards the hosts - mai would be used for someone coming towards the speaker. The town must be written Whakatāne with the macron: it is a proper name, the long ā is part of it, and misspelling a place name in a formal email to the people who live there is a visible error.
3. The draft is 95 words and the limit is 80. What do you cut, and how do you keep all four required elements?
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Fifteen words have to go, and the draft has obvious fat: two sentences on the bus timetable repeat what the arrival sentence already says, so compress to one - Ka tae atu au mā runga pahi ā te Rāmere, ā te toru karaka - which covers the arrival requirement. The netball sentence tells the hosts nothing they need, so it goes entirely. The thanks and the question can be joined rather than sitting in separate paragraphs: Ka nui taku mihi ki a kōrua, ā, me kawe mai au i tētahi moenga? That keeps the question ('should I bring a sleeping bag?') and the mihi while saving words. Check afterwards that the greeting (Tēnā kōrua), arrival, thanks and question all survive - cutting words must never cut a required element.