Voicemail from the kapa haka tutor: moved, not cancelled
Mere checks her phone after netball and finds a 45-second voicemail from her kapa haka tutor, Matua Rangi. The corridor is noisy and she listens only once. She writes: 'Parakitihi kua whakakorea. Haka? 15 meneti.' What he actually said was: 'Kia ora e Mere. Kāore e tū te parakitihi ā te Wenerei nei - kua nekehia ki te Tāite, ā te rima karaka, ki te whare o te kura, kaua ki te whare nui. E toru wiki noa iho ki te hui ā-rohe, nō reira kia tekau mā rima meneti te roa o tō mahi i te waiata ā-ringa. Nā Kāi Tahu tātou i pōhiri.' Mere writes in her report that the festival is hosted by 'Ngāi Tahu' and that practices have been cancelled for the week.
1. Identify what Mere misheard and write the note she should have produced.
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Kua nekehia is the passive of neke - 'has been moved'. Cancelled would be kua whakakorea, from whakakore. Mere heard kua plus a long word and guessed the meaning that seemed bigger, but the practice still happens: Thursday, 5.00 pm, in the school building rather than the whare nui. She also wrote haka?, but Matua Rangi said te waiata ā-ringa - the action song, a different item in the bracket - and 15 meneti is how long she should spend on that item, not the length of the whole rehearsal. Correct note: 'Parakitihi: Tāite 5.00, whare o te kura (kaua ko te whare nui). Mahi waiata ā-ringa: 15 meneti.'
2. How many practices remain before the regional festival, and what does Mere's 'cancelled' assumption cost her?
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E toru wiki noa iho ki te hui ā-rohe - only three weeks to the regional festival. If practices run weekly, moving Wednesday's session to Thursday does not reduce the number: she still has three, but the day and venue have both changed. Acting on 'cancelled' means she misses one of only three sessions in the final three weeks - the cost is concentrated exactly where rehearsal matters most. The note also flattens the instruction: kia tekau mā rima meneti te roa o tō mahi i te waiata ā-ringa sets 15 minutes on one item, so the total rehearsal is longer than her note implies. The exam point is that time, day, number and task are all carried by small words (noa iho, ā te, mā) that get lost on a single noisy listen.
3. Mere's report says 'Ngāi Tahu'; the tutor said 'Kāi Tahu'. What should she write, and why?
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Both forms name the same iwi. Kāi Tahu is the spelling the iwi itself uses and reflects the southern dialect, in which k stands where northern dialects have ng - hence Ngāi Tahu in northern spelling and Kāi Tahu in the south. Matua Rangi, speaking in the role of host, used Kāi Tahu, and the iwi's own usage is the respectful standard, so her report should read Kāi Tahu. If she quotes someone else's words directly, she keeps their spelling. The judgement is about respecting self-identification: a well-meant 'correction' can overwrite how a group names itself, and in a listening task the speaker's form is the evidence, not the candidate's habit.