Māori

Kids book in te reo Māori

It is one of the known methods of learning languages – to acquire it like a child. I think that something similar has happened with my Polish. it was not the only way of learning because I was learning grammar from the start, but it was a part of my learning – I moved to Poland, listened to the spoken language, additionally, watched movies and read children’s (I think they were more for the teenagers) books. It seems for the others that it was easy for me because Polish is similar to Ukrainian, but it does not matter that I have not made any effort. This is a topic for a different post. Speaking about te reo.

Te reo Māori is a completely new language for me. I learn it already for a long time, but it is still really challenging for me. A few days ago, I have found a nice book in te reo Māori for really small children, but it was amazing for me because my level is still limited, but it was so nice to see examples of the simple sentences and questions and also learn some new words. I have noticed that I would build the sentences the same way, but about the questions I have noticed something curios. For example, when they characters of the book were asking a question with only one adjective, like “Big?”, they used articles: “He nui?” I would never think of adding the article here. I have not also learned it from my grammar book yet. So, the kids book was really useful. I have a few more books, so I plan to continue reading them. Of course, it is a bit strange reading a preschool book, but actually, it is unbelievably cute.

I am going to test this method more. I even consider applying it to my other languages, for example, to my Portuguese. Of course, my Portuguese is much better than my Māori, but it would still be funny to try.

I will post updates about after I use this method even more. This is a just first impression.