Cook Islands Māori (NCEA Level 2)
This section covers the Cook Islands Māori domain of the NCEA Level 2 subject. The exam tests your ability to understand and produce spoken and written Cook Islands Māori in familiar contexts, and to choose forms that fit meaning, audience, and cultural setting. Because the source subject page is not available, use this as a language-focused revision frame and check your own prescription for text types.
Core rules and concepts
- Orthography: Write macrons for long vowels and the glottal stop consistently (Māori, Kūki ‘Āirani). The digraph ng is one sound. These marks are meaning-bearing, not decoration.
- Pronouns: singular au, koe, aia; dual māua (we two, excluding you), tāua (we two, including you), kōrua, rāua; plural mātou, tātou, koutou, rātou. Choose number and inclusivity before translating.
- Possession: possessives fall into a and o classes (tāku/tōku, tāna/tōna). Learn the class with each noun; do not translate English “my” mechanically.
- Verb markers: kua marks completed action, ka future, e … ana ongoing, and i past/perfective in many patterns. Negation commonly uses kāre with the right marker.
- Questions: question words and phrase order differ from English; practise frames such as “Nō hea koe?” (Where are you from?) and answer with “Nō … au.”
Worked example
Complete: “Ko tō ___ ‘are tēia” - “This is your (two people) house.” Reasoning: ‘are “house” takes an o-class possessive, so use tō, not tā. The possessor is two people addressed, so the dual pronoun is kōrua, not koutou (three or more). Answer: kōrua. Check the whole phrase: “Ko tō kōrua ‘are tēia.”
Traps that cost marks
- Using rātou or koutou for exactly two people.
- Mixing a-class and o-class possessives.
- Omitting macrons or glottal stops, then losing the intended word.
- Translating English tense word-for-word instead of using kua, ka, e … ana.
- Treating dialect variants as errors; recognise them, but follow the norm used in your assessment.