How much is it in Māori? Shopping in Māori: E hia te utu?

Shopping in Māori starts with one question, and the answer to how much is it in Māori is E hia te utu? ‘How much is it?’ Point at something and say E hia te utu o tēnei? ‘How much is this one?’, and the answer comes back in tāra ‘dollars’: E rua tekau tāra. ‘Twenty dollars.’ Below are the price question word by word, dollars and cents, the verb hoko that means both buy and sell, the words for the shop, the till and the change, the phrases for too dear and I’ll take it, and a shop conversation with both parts written out for a class role-play.

Updated 7 November 2026 · 9 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.

How much is it in Māori? E hia te utu?

The question has three parts. E hia? is Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s how many are there?, the question that expects a number for its answer. Te is the. And utu is the price: Te Aka gives it as cost, price, wage, fee, payment, among other senses. So E hia te utu? is literally how many is the price?

Māori	English	When
E hia te utu?	How much is it?	The everyday question.
E hia te utu o tēnei?	How much is this one?	Pointing at something by you.
He aha te utu?	What is the price?	Also heard; it asks what, not how many.

O tēnei is of this one: the price of this. Verbavia’s course teaches e hia as the question to use, because it is the one that asks for a number. Tēnei is something near you; for something further away the same question takes tērā: E hia te utu o tērā? ‘How much is that one?’

Utu is a bigger word than price. Te Aka describes it as reciprocity, “an important concept concerned with the maintenance of balance and harmony in relationships”, which covered the return of a gift as well as of an injury. A price is that same idea at the counter: something given back for what you take. The course explains it alongside mana and tapu.

Saying the price: tāra and hēneti

Te Aka lists tāra as a loan from English, dollar, with a less common spelling taara. A cent is hēneti, and Te Aka’s example sentence does the sum for you: Kotahi rau ngā hēneti ki te kotahi tāra. ‘There are one hundred cents to the dollar.’ Money itself is moni, money, cash, borrowed too.

Price	Māori
$5	E rima tāra.
$20	E rua tekau tāra.
$15.50	Tekau mā rima tāra, e rima tekau hēneti.
$80	E waru tekau tāra.
$200	E rua rau tāra.

The small e in front of the number is the counting rule: it goes before two to nine and the tens and hundreds built on them, but not before tekau ‘ten’ or any teen, so fifteen dollars is tekau mā rima tāra with no e. The numbers themselves, and the reason for the rule, are in Māori numbers, days and months; this page does not repeat them.

The coins and notes

Te Aka also gives the coins and notes their own entries, as names:

Māori	Te Aka’s gloss
tekau heneti	ten cent coin, ten cents
rua tekau heneti	twenty-cent coin
kotahi tāra	one dollar coin, one dollar
rua tāra	two dollar coin, $2
rima tāra	five-dollar note, $5
tekau tāra	ten-dollar note, $10
rua tekau tāra	twenty-dollar note, $20
rima tekau tāra	fifty-dollar note, $50
kotahi rau tāra	one hundred dollar note, $100

Two spelling details. The word for a cent has a long first vowel, hēneti, but Te Aka writes the two coin names without the macron, tekau heneti and rua tekau heneti; the course follows the headword and writes hēneti throughout. And tāra needs its macron: tara with a short a is a different word, whose senses in Te Aka include a peak or point and the white-fronted tern.

Buying and selling: hoko

Māori uses one verb for both sides of a sale. Te Aka defines hoko as to buy, sell, barter, trade, exchange, purchase, and adds that it was “originally used for trade between hapū and iwi”. Who is buying and who is selling comes from the rest of the sentence:

Māori	English	Source
I haere au ki te hoko kai.	I went to buy food.	Verbavia’s course
I hoko hoki au i ētahi hū mō tāku tama.	I also bought some shoes for my son.	Verbavia’s course
Kua hokona te whare me te whenua.	The building and the land have been sold.	Te Aka’s example, from a newspaper of 1904
Me hoko taku toa me aku taonga.	I must sell my shop and goods.	Te Aka’s example under toa, from 1876

Hokona is the passive, bought or sold. Doubled, hokohoko is to trade, barter, exchange, sell, buy. The person takes the prefix kai-: Te Aka’s kaihoko is shop assistant, shopkeeper, seller, retailer, vendor, buyer, so it too faces both ways. Te Aka also has kirihoko, purchaser, and kaitango, buyer, for when only the buyer is meant.

What about hoko atu and hoko mai?

Te Aka has no entry for hoko atu or hoko mai. What it does define are the two direction words: atu marks movement away from the speaker, and mai movement towards the speaker. One of its example sentences, from a 2010 economics text, uses the first with hoko for goods moving on from a seller: shops buy from wholesalers hei hoko atu anō mā rātou ki te kirihoko ‘for them to resell to purchasers’. That is as far as the dictionary goes, so this page offers no rule beyond it: read hoko from its sentence.

At the counter you may not need the verb at all. To take something, the course teaches Māku tēnei. ‘I’ll take this one.’, literally this is for me. Māku is for me, to be mine; nāku is mine already, which is why you choose with māku.

Shop words in Māori

Toa is shop, store, marked as a loan in Te Aka. It has a separate entry from toa, to win, brave, warrior, a different word that happens to look the same. The rest of the shop:

Māori	English	Note
toa	shop, store	Also whare hokohoko, general store.
toa hokomaha	supermarket	Also whare hokomaha; the course says hokomaha.
toa hoko kākahu	clothing shop
toa rongoā	chemist
papa hokohoko	shopping centre, shopping plaza
kāta hoko	shopping cart	Loan.
pae utu	counter, checkout	Literally the paying place.
paeutu kirihoko	self-checkout	The purchaser’s checkout.
pēke	bag, sack, pack	A separate loan, also spelt pēke, is a bank.
moni	money, cash	Loan.
tīni	change (money)	Loan; also the verb to change.
rihīti	receipt	Loan.
kāri tahua	bankcard
kāri nama	credit card	Loan.
mīhini moni	ATM	Literally money machine.
utu hoko	purchase price, selling price
whakahekenga utu	discount	Literally a lowering of the price.
whakahokinga moni	refund	A giving back of money.
kore utu	free, without fee	Also utukore, free, cost-free.
moni pūkoro	pocket money, allowance

Te Aka’s own example for the checkout is one a family can use on the way out: Me haere tāua ki te pae utu ināianei. ‘We had better go to the checkout now.’

Too dear, cheaper, and I’ll take it

These are the sentences Verbavia’s course teaches for a shop, in the order a visit tends to go:

Māori	English
Kei te tirotiro noa iho au.	I’m just looking.
E hia te utu o tēnei?	How much is this one?
He nui rawa te utu.	The price is too high.
He iti ake te utu o tēnei?	Is this one cheaper?
Ko tērā, te mea nui, koa.	That one, the big one, please.
Māku tēnei. Māku e utu.	I’ll take this one. I’ll pay.
Ka taea te utu mā te kāri?	Can I pay by card?
He nui rawa te utu. Kāo, kia ora.	The price is too high. No, thank you.

Price is described with size: a high price is nui ‘big’ and a low one iti ‘small’, so expensive is he nui te utu and cheap is he iti te utu. Rawa after the word makes it too, and ake makes it more: iti ake, smaller, cheaper. Noa iho plays something down, just looking. And Kāo, kia ora, no, thanks, is a polite way to leave. More everyday phrases, from please and sorry to goodbye, are in common Māori phrases.

A shop dialogue in Māori for role-play

This is the conversation Verbavia’s course teaches with both parts, the shop assistant’s and the customer’s. It needs two people and one object to sell; in a classroom, a bag or a pencil case on a desk will do.

Who	Māori	English
Kaihoko (shop assistant)	Kia ora! He aha tāu e hiahia ana?	Hello! What would you like?
Customer	Kei te tirotiro noa iho au.	I’m just looking.
Customer	Ā, he pēke tāu?	Oh, have you got a bag?
Kaihoko	Āe. Ko tēhea?	Yes. Which one?
Customer	Ko tērā, te mea whero.	That one, the red one.
Kaihoko	Anei.	Here you are.
Customer	E hia te utu?	How much is it?
Kaihoko	E toru tekau tāra.	Thirty dollars.
Customer	He nui rawa. He iti ake te utu o tēnei?	That’s too much. Is this one cheaper?
Kaihoko	Āe, e rua tekau.	Yes, twenty.
Customer	Ka pai. Māku tēnei.	Good. I’ll take this one.
Kaihoko	Ka utu koe mā te aha?	How will you pay?
Customer	Mā te kāri.	By card.
Kaihoko	Anei tō rihīti. He pēke māu?	Here’s your receipt. A bag for you?
Customer	Kāo, kei te pai. Kia ora!	No, that’s fine. Thanks!
Kaihoko	Kia ora, haere rā!	Thanks, goodbye!
Customer	E noho rā!	Goodbye!

Three things to point out to a class. Anei is here it is, by me, said as you hand something over. Mā te kāri uses mā for the means, by card; for cash, the answer is mā te moni. And the goodbyes are not interchangeable: the one leaving says e noho rā (noho is stay) to the one staying, who answers haere rā (haere is go). The customer leaves, so the customer says e noho rā.

To vary it, swap the colour (the eleven everyday ones are in Māori colours), the price, or mā te kāri for mā te moni. Teachers will find classroom instructions, praise and the questions children need in te reo Māori for teachers.

A market stall version for younger learners

A shorter exchange, for a school fair or a pretend shop, with coins to count. Kia hia? is Te Aka’s how many are wanted?, and its example answer is Kia toru māku. ‘Three for me.’

Who	Māori	English
Customer	Kia ora. E hia te utu o tēnei?	Hello. How much is this one?
Stallholder	E rua tāra.	Two dollars.
Stallholder	Kia hia māu?	How many would you like?
Customer	Kia toru māku.	Three for me.
Stallholder	E ono tāra.	Six dollars.
Customer	Anei tekau tāra.	Here’s ten dollars.
Stallholder	Anei tō tīni, e whā tāra.	Here’s your change, four dollars.
Customer	Kia ora! E noho rā!	Thanks! Goodbye!
Stallholder	Haere rā!	Goodbye!

The sums are the practice: two dollars three times is e ono tāra, and tekau tāra takes no e, because ten never does.

Christmas shopping in Māori

In December the same question does most of the work. A present is perehana, borrowed from English, and a card is kāri Kirihimete, so at the card rack: E hia te utu o tēnei kāri Kirihimete? ‘How much is this Christmas card?’ What to write inside it, and the rest of the season’s words, are in Merry Christmas in Māori.

Older money words: pāuna, hereni and kapa

Before dollars and cents, New Zealand counted in pounds, shillings and pence, and nineteenth-century Māori newspapers borrowed those too. Te Aka keeps them: pāuna is a pound, of money or weight; hereni is a shilling, “equivalent to 10 cents”; herengi is a shilling and, more widely, money; and a penny is pene or kapa, which Te Aka glosses penny, copper. One survives in an idiom adopted from English: Kua taka te kapa. ‘The penny has dropped.’

Going further

Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course teaches all of this in order: the numbers first, then moni and tāra, then the shop, with both sides of the conversation and a paragraph about what you bought, every example spoken in a native te reo voice.