The above book is meant o have won some prize. I don't much like it, I'm afraid, as I find it too verbose. Its sentences are too long, and the vocabulary is obstruse/abstruse. It is bilingual, but I don't know in which language it was originally written.
Simpler books are easier to follow. I'm at the stage where I can follow intermediate texts, where both languages exist side by side, and when the subject matter is from ordinary life.
From the above book, I collect such sentences that I mostly understand.
He tino hoa te tokorua nei. (I'm not really sure why 'nei' was used, or what 'tokorua' means - although I expect that it relates to 'two', but that will come. The rest of the sentence is easy to input if not output.)
I te wa o te koanga, oma tahi ai raua i runga i nga puke. (From the context I can predict that 'wa o te koanga' means 'season of spring'. The rest of the sentence helps me to remember this phrase.)
kia mahana ai raua i nga po makariri o te hotoke (This is a phrase from a longer sentence. I already recognize 'makariri' though I'm hazy on the meaning. But by have the word paired with 'mahana' - which is itself linked to 'night' - I firm up my understanding. I also become alerted to the word 'hotoke' and guess that it means 'winter'. I expect to either confirm or correct that fact later.)
I tehahi ra, i te wa o te hotoke, i pupuhi te hau, ka whakaueue nga rakau. (On the very next page, I confirm my guess. I also link puphi with hau, and get to see how the word 'whakaueue' is constructed.)
kei te matekai nga manu (This is a very useful phrase, allowing me to see how the word 'mate', which I knew can mean both death and sickness, may be combined with 'kai' to indicate hunger. Cool!
Finally, na te mea kua hohonu ake te noho o nga noke cements the word for 'worm' a little more firmly into place; I had seen it earlier this morning in another children's book. It may take several dozen exposures to a new word before it lodges in the brain.
During my week of leave, the family visited Port Chalmers for a day trip. At the library there I explored the children's Maori language section.
I like that they have a number of bilingual stories, with the English and Maori equivalents on adjacent pages. That's a useful set-up. But what I don't find useful is when the writer goes all literary on the reader and tries to impress with long flowery convoluted sentences. I say that it shouldn't be about trying to impress the parents!
Anyway, I got out three books. I 'dove' straight into The Singing Dolphin when we got home.
