Plural forms for Maori

[Ian Beardslee]

Hi there,

As I was wandering around the Maori translation area, looking at what I
could start working on and I came across a message at this link ...
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/gnome-applets/+pots/gnome-applets-2.0/mi/+translate...

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Rosetta can’t handle the plural items in this file, because it doesn’t
yet know how plural forms work for Maori.

To fix this, please e-mail the Rosetta users mailing list
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My understanding is that the word 'te' is the singular 'the' and 'nga'
is the plural 'the'.

As an example ...

te karearea ... the falcon

nga karearea ... the falcons


>From this page ... http://www.maori.org.nz/KoTeReo/tuatahi/tenga.htm

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Use of Te and Nga

________________________________________________________________________
In English you can make plurals by putting an s at the end of a word.
This is never done in Maori. Instead, you make a plural by changing the
word in front of the object. This is the first way; there are many other
ways of making plurals but these will be covered later on. 

te = the (one thing only) 
nga = the (more than one thing) 

In Maori you NEVER start a sentence with te or nga, instead you put a Ko
in front of those words. 

Use this simple pattern to help remember the sentence structure 


Ko 
te / nga 
object  
colour 
The black dog 
Ko 
te 
kuri 
mangu 
The black
dogs 
Ko 
nga 
kuri 
mangu 
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And then we have issues where different regions with a variation in
dialect ... http://www.maori.org.nz/ko-te-reo/dialect.htm ...

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Waikato often 
add ‘ng’ to some plurals e.g eenei = ngeenei, aana = ngaana 
  
Northland often 
add ‘w’ to plurals e.g eetahi = weetahi, eenei = weenei 
(especially when they follow ‘u’ or ‘o’)
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I'm not sure of the usual process for this, and I probably should
research this a bit more before I go spouting off in case there are
other parts where plurals can affect things.


Cheers,

Ian