Māori a and o categories: tāku or tōku? Explained
Te reo Māori has two words for my: tāku and tōku. Which one you use depends on your relationship to the thing. What you are in charge of is ā: tāku pukapuka ‘my book’. What encloses you, came before you or is part of you is ō: tōku whare ‘my house’. Grammars call these the a and o categories, and the same one-vowel choice runs through every possessive in the language.
Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.
What are the a and o categories?
English has one my and uses it for a book, a mother, a leg and a house alike. Māori sorts those into two groups and marks the group with a vowel. Ask one question: am I in charge of this?
| ā category | ō category | |
|---|---|---|
| The idea | You made it, act on it, chose it or look after it | It encloses you, came before you, or is part of you |
| “my”, one thing | tāku | tōku |
| Typical words | food, books, tools, work, children, pets | parents, body, clothes, feelings, house, name, language |
| Examples | tāku kai ‘my food’ | tōku ingoa ‘my name’ |
Te Aka Māori Dictionary puts it more formally. It gives tāku as the form used “when the possessor has control of the relationship or is dominant, active or superior to what is possessed”, and tōku as the form used when the possessor “has, or had, no control of the relationship or is subordinate, passive or inferior to what is possessed”. Grammars call the two the a category and the o category.
The test is the relationship, not ownership
The lists above are easy. The cases that teach the rule are the ones that look wrong at first.
- Your house is ō, even though you paid for it, because you go inside it: tōku whare. The same goes for anything you travel in.
- Your clothes are ō. You chose them and you can take them off, but you are inside them: ōku kākahu ‘my clothes’. This is the case that shows ownership is not the test.
- Your name is ō. It was given to you, and it was there before you knew about it: tōku ingoa.
- Your father is ō and your child is ā. That sounds backwards until you read it the right way round. Your parents came before you; your child is someone you are responsible for: tōku matua ‘my father’, tāku tama ‘my son’.
- Your feelings are ō. They happen to you.
- Your work is ā and your language is ō. Work is something you produce; a language is something you are born into: He aha tāu mahi? He nēhi tāku mahi. ‘What is your work? I am a nurse.’, Kei te ako au i tōku reo. ‘I am learning my language.’
You may meet the split explained as close against far. That is no help: your own hand and your own dinner are both close, and they are in different categories. Control is the question. A quick version that works in practice: could you put it in a bag and carry it off? Then ā. Do you get inside it, wear it, or were you born to it? Then ō.
The people in your life
Family words follow the same test, read as who came first and who is responsible for whom.
| Who | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| ō | parents, grandparents and other elders, brothers and sisters | ōku mātua ‘my parents’, tōku tuakana ‘my older sibling of my own sex’ |
| ā | children and grandchildren, and a husband or wife | āku tamariki ‘my children’, tāku mokopuna ‘my grandchild’ |
Friends are usually spoken of with ō: Kāore ōku hoa. ‘I have no friends.’ One common word has no fixed category at all. hoa rangatira ‘spouse, partner’ is heard both ways, so the course uses the neutral form with it: Ko Hone taku hoa rangatira. ‘Hone is my husband.’ The words themselves, including why brother depends on who is speaking, are set out in Māori family words.
Māori possessive pronouns: my, your, his and her
The shape of the set never varies. Take the ā word and swap the vowel for the ō word. For more than one thing, drop the t.
| ā, one thing | ō, one thing | ā, several | ō, several | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| my | tāku | tōku | āku | ōku |
| your (one person) | tāu | tōu | āu | ōu |
| his or her | tāna | tōna | āna | ōna |
So tāna kurī ‘his dog’ is one dog, and Ka karanga ia ki āna tamariki. ‘She called her children.’ has several children. The noun itself does not change for the plural; the missing t is the only sign. One word covers his and her, because Māori pronouns carry no gender.
These words can also stand alone, which is how Māori avoids saying a noun twice: He nui tōku whare, engari he iti tōna. ‘My house is big, but his is small.’ And each phrase is judged on its own, so one sentence can carry both categories: Kei roto i tōku rūma tāku pukapuka. ‘My book is in my room.’ The room encloses you; the book is yours to carry.
The neutral form: taku, tō, tana
There is a way out, and it is honest Māori. taku ‘my’, tō ‘your’ and tana ‘his or her’ take no side. Note the plain vowel in taku and tana, with no macron. Te Aka describes taku as “the neutral or informal form” that “is not governed by the a and o categories”.
- taku hoa ‘my friend’
- Kei hea taku pukapuka? ‘Where’s my book?’
- Ko wai tō ingoa? ‘What is your name?’
People who grew up with the language use these constantly, so reaching for one is not a beginner’s dodge. Guessing wrong is the thing to avoid, and the neutral forms are how you avoid it. They have one limit, which Te Aka also records: a neutral form must be followed by a noun. It cannot stand alone the way tōna did in the sentence about the two houses.
Our and their
When more than one person owns the thing, the possessive is built from two words: tā or tō, then the pronoun. The vowel is the same test as before, and dropping the t again makes the plural.
- tō rāua whare ‘their house’, of two people. A house is ō.
- I muri i tā mātou kai, ka moe mātou. ‘After we ate, we slept.’ Literally after our eating. Food and eating are ā.
- Tokorua ā māua tamariki. ‘We have two children.’ Children are ā, there is more than one, so the t is gone.
Which pronoun goes in the second slot, and why Māori has four of them for our, is covered in Māori pronouns: tāua, māua, tātou, mātou.
Mere’s book, Mere’s house: a and o between two nouns
Between two nouns the same vowel appears on its own, with no t and no macron, where English uses of or ’s:
- Kei runga i te tēpu te pukapuka a Mere. ‘Mere’s book is on the table.’
- Kei te whare o Mere au. ‘I am at Mere’s house.’
A book is ā and a house is ō, so it is a in the first and o in the second. The noun that is possessed decides, exactly as it does for tāku and tōku. The standard grammar-book illustration turns one pair of words around: the children of the parent takes a, and the parent of the children takes o.
Nā and nō, mā and mō: whose it is, and who it is for
The category is not a fact about the word my. It is something the language keeps track of everywhere, and the vowel is how it shows. Four more words are built on it, as a grid with two questions. Is it theirs already (n-), or is it for them (m-)? And is the thing ā or ō?
| Māori | English | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Nā Mere tēnei pukapuka. | This book is Mere’s. | already hers; a book is ā |
| Nō Mere tēnei whare. | This house is Mere’s. | already hers; a house is ō |
| Mā Mere tēnei kai. | This food is for Mere. | for her; food is ā |
| He tūru mōku. | A chair for me. | for me; a chair holds you, so ō |
They fuse with the pronouns in the shape you would guess: nāku and nōku are mine, māku and mōku are for me. The owner opens the sentence, the opposite of English: Nāku tēnei. ‘This is mine.’, literally mine, this.
Three everyday sentences come out of this grid:
- Nō hea koe? ‘Where are you from?’ It is nō because where you are from is not something you chose.
- Māku e mahi. ‘I’ll do it.’ Literally for me to do. This is how you offer; Ka mahi au. ‘I will work.’ only predicts.
- Nā wai tēnei pukapuka? Nāku. ‘Whose is this book? Mine.’
How to say “I have” in Māori
Māori has no everyday verb to have. Having is said with a possessive, so the category choice comes with it:
- He pukapuka tāku. ‘I have a book.’ Literally a book is mine.
- Tokorua āku tamariki. ‘I have two children.’
- Kāore āku moni. ‘I have no money.’ Money is ā.
- Kāore ōku hoa. ‘I have no friends.’ Friends are usually ō.
Age is said the same way, with ō: E hia ōu tau? ‘How old are you?’ is literally how many are your years. How the rest of a sentence is put together is in Māori sentence structure.
Why a pepeha is ō from end to end
A pepeha is the formal way of introducing yourself by the mountain, river and people you come from. Everything it names is something you belong to, so it is ō throughout: Ko Taranaki tōku maunga. ‘Taranaki is my mountain.’, Ko Te Āti Awa tōku iwi. ‘Te Āti Awa is my iwi.’ The ā words arrive only when you reach what you have made: Ko Pita tāku tama. ‘Pita is my son.’ The full form, and who should say which lines, is in pepeha: how to introduce yourself in Māori.
How to learn the a and o categories
- Build the two lists once. The same category returns in tāku and tōku, in a and o, and in nā, nō, mā and mō. It is one piece of knowledge, used over and over.
- Learn each new noun in a phrase. tōku whare rather than the bare word for house, the way a learner of French learns a noun with its article.
- Ask the question, and believe the answer. Am I in charge of it? Clothes and houses will feel wrong for a while.
- Use the neutral form when you are not sure. taku, tō and tana are correct either way.
The course itself calls this the single hardest thing in the language for an English speaker, and where it sits among the other difficulties is in is te reo Māori hard to learn. The free te reo Māori course teaches the categories from lesson 40 and comes back to them in every possessive after that, and the most common Māori words are listed by frequency.
The ā category is in the standard formal sign-off too: Māori email greetings explains why nāku is the word a writer uses.
Sources
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tāku — used “when the possessor has control of the relationship or is dominant, active or superior to what is possessed”; taku — “the neutral or informal form”, “not governed by the a and o categories”, which must be followed by a noun.
- Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tōku — used when the possessor “has, or had, no control of the relationship or is subordinate, passive or inferior to what is possessed”.
- Wikipedia: Māori language — the a and o classes of possessive; the table of singular possessives and their plurals; tā/tō and ā/ō before dual and plural pronouns (tō rāua whare); ngā tamariki a te matua against te matua o ngā tamariki (citing Biggs 1998).