Māori pronouns: tāua, māua, tātou and mātou

Te reo Māori has eleven personal pronouns where English has seven. Each one counts the people, as one, exactly two, or three or more, and the words for we also say whether the person you are talking to is included: Kei te haere tāua. ‘You and I are going.’ takes the listener along, and Kei te haere māua. ‘The two of us are going.’ leaves them behind.

Updated 14 October 2026 · 8 min read

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.

The Māori pronoun table

English asks one question before choosing a pronoun: who? Māori asks two more. How many people, and, for we, is the listener one of them?

Grammars call the three columns singular, dual and plural, and the two kinds of we inclusive and exclusive. Māori shares the whole arrangement with its Polynesian relatives; the Hawaiian forms are set beside the Māori ones in Māori vs Hawaiian.

The pronouns do not change with their job in the sentence. English has I and me, they and them; Māori has one form for both: Kei te kai rātou. ‘They are eating.’ and Ka kī mai ia ki a mātou, «Haere mai.» ‘He said to us, “Come.”’ use the same kind of word for the doer and for the people spoken to.

You can read each word from its two halves

Eleven pronouns look like a memorising job. They are not, because each of the two-person and many-person words is built from two halves.

• The end says how many. -ua is exactly two. -tou is three or more.
• The start says who. t- and m- are we, k- is you, r- is they.

So rātou is r- for they and -tou for three or more. kōrua is k- for you and -ua for two. māua is m- for we and -ua for two, and the m- carries one more piece of meaning, which is the next section. Read the end first for the number, then the start for the person.

The four Māori words for “we”

English says we’re going and leaves the listener to work out whether they are invited. Māori cannot be vague about it. t- takes the listener in; m- leaves them out.

Te Aka Māori Dictionary glosses the four the same way: tāua is “you (one person) and I”, māua is “he/she and I”, tātou is “you (two or more) and I”, and mātou is “they and I”.

This is barely grammar. Saying tātou to a room is an invitation. Saying mātou draws a line around a group with the listener outside it. Both are correct Māori, they differ by one letter, and socially they mean opposite things. Said to someone who thought they were invited, mātou is a mistake that is felt, not just heard.

The rule of thumb the course gives: on the phone to someone, telling them what you and the people with you are doing, it is an m- word. Standing beside them, talking about what you are both doing, it is a t- word.

Two is not “many”

The dual is exact. kōrua is two people and never three; koe is one person and never two. Since there is a word for two, Māori expects you to use it. You have been doing this since the first greeting you learned:

The greeting makes you count the people in front of you before you open your mouth, and the pronouns are that same habit gone one step further. The commonest slip is asking a couple Kei te pēhea koe? ‘How are you?’, which asks only one of them. How the greetings change with number is in Māori greetings.

In a story the dual is a tracking device. rāua means exactly two people already mentioned, so it points back precisely where English they points vaguely: Kei te haere rāua. ‘The two of them are going.’

Ia: one word for he and she

Māori pronouns carry no gender. ia is he and it is she: Kei te haere ia. ‘He or she is going.’ Speakers do not feel anything is missing, because the sentence says who it is about in other ways. What Māori gives you in number it takes back in gender, and the fix when two people need telling apart is to use the name again. Repeating a name is normal in Māori, and in a longer account it is expected.

au and ahau are two forms of the same word, I, and you will hear both: Kei te pai ahau. ‘I am well.’, Kei te kai au. ‘I am eating.’

Where a Māori pronoun goes in the sentence

A Māori sentence puts the action first and the doer after it, so a pronoun that is doing something follows the verb: I haere au. ‘I went.’ In a sentence that says where someone is, it follows the place: Kei te kura rātou. ‘They are at school.’ The full order, with the markers that go in front of the verb, is in Māori sentence structure.

Two things move it. The first is the negative: after kāore the pronoun jumps forward, as in Kāore au i te haere. ‘I am not going.’ and Kāore rāua i te kīhini. ‘The two of them are not in the kitchen.’

The second is a small word in front. After i and ki a pronoun takes a, the same word that goes in front of a person’s name:

• I kite au i a ia. ‘I saw him.’
• Ka kite au i a koe āpōpō. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
• Kei te kōrero au ki a ia. ‘I’m talking to him.’
• Ngā mihi ki a koutou. ‘Our thanks to you all.’

Te Aka’s entry for māua puts it this way: the pronoun “takes a when following ki, i, kei and hei but does not take a when used as the subject of the sentence”. The one variation is the first person after ki, where the course has both ki a au and ki ahau: He pai ki a au te kai. ‘I like the food.’, and He pai ki ahau te moana, engari he pai ki a ia te maunga. ‘I like the sea, but she likes the mountain.’

Mere and I: māua ko Mere

English says Mere and I. Māori starts with the pronoun for the whole group and then names the other person after ko:

It is māua and not tāua, because the person you are speaking to is outside the pair. tāua never needs a name, since the other person is the one listening. The same pattern asks who came along: I haere kōrua ko wai? ‘Who did you go with?’, literally you two, and who? And two names are joined with rāua ko between them, as in the last row.

Asking with one pronoun, answering with another

A question is asked with the pronoun you mean and answered with the one that fits the speaker. Ask two people where they are, and two people answer, not including you: Kei hea kōrua? Kei konei māua. ‘Where are you two? We two are here.’ In the same way Kei hea koutou? ‘Where are you all?’ is answered with mātou.

Let’s go: the t- words as an invitation

Because tāua and tātou include the listener, they are how Māori makes a suggestion. With the marker ka in front, a statement about us becomes let’s, and as a question it becomes shall we:

• Ka haere tātou. ‘Let’s all go.’ You are included.
• Ka haere mātou. ‘We’re going.’ You are not.
• Ka haere tāua? ‘Shall you and I go?’
• Ka kai tātou ināianei? ‘Shall we all eat now?’

One letter separates an invitation from an announcement that somebody is being left behind, which is the best reason to choose this word deliberately.

Our and their

The pronouns also build the possessives for more than one owner. tā or tō goes in front of the pronoun, and the pronoun keeps everything it says about number and about the listener: tō rāua whare ‘their house’ belongs to exactly two people, and Tokorua ā māua tamariki. ‘We have two children.’ is said to someone who is not one of the parents. Whether it is tā or tō is a separate choice, explained in the a and o categories: tāku or tōku.

What English speakers get wrong

• Using koe for two people. Two is kōrua; three or more is koutou.
• Saying mātou to someone who is in the group. If your listener is one of the people, it is the t- word, every time.
• Using rātou for two. Two people are rāua.
• Looking for he and she. There is only ia. Use the name when it matters.
• Forgetting the a. i a ia, ki a koe, not the bare pronoun after i or ki.
• Translating “Mere and I” word for word. It is māua ko Mere.

The table is regular and quick to learn. Choosing quickly in conversation is what takes practice, and it is one of the things weighed up in is te reo Māori hard to learn. The free te reo Māori course introduces au, koe and ia in its first lessons and the rest of the table from lesson 23, and the most common Māori words are listed by frequency.

Sources

1. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tāua — “you (one person) and I”; like all pronouns, “takes a when following ki, i, kei and hei but, in most dialects, does not take a when used as the subject of the sentence”.
2. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: māua — “we, us, he/she and I, him/her and me”.
3. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tātou — “we, us, you (two or more) and I”.
4. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mātou — “we, us, they and I, them and me”; also “and I, and me”, used before ko and a name when other people are named.
5. Wikipedia: Māori language — singular, dual and plural pronouns; inclusive and exclusive first person; tā/tō before dual and plural pronouns (tō rāua whare), citing Biggs 1998.
6. Wikipedia: Clusivity — the inclusive and exclusive “we”.