au / ahau

I and Me

Level 1

Au and ahau both refer to the speaker.

How It Works

Both Kei te kai au and Kei te kai ahau say that I am eating. A verbal subject usually follows the predicate in a basic positive clause.

After personal prepositions, follow the complete pronoun construction. Ki ahau is a useful full form. Do not assume every occurrence of au elsewhere in the language is this pronoun: vowel length, neighboring words and sentence structure still matter.

Examples (3)

Kei te kai au.
I am eating.
Kei te haere ahau.
I am going.
He kaiako ahau.
I am a teacher.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

au / ahauLevel 1I and Me

Learn This First

Introduce au and ahau as first-person singular references with the same participant meaning. Their distribution depends on construction and speaker preference; teach ki ahau as a complete useful form rather than freely substituting either spelling everywhere.

Reading a Māori Phrase
Finding the complete predicate first makes it easier to locate au or ahau as the speaker subject following kei te kai.
Level 1

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Practice au / ahau in Bubblegum

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