Awatea: daylight

Tue Jul 24 2012 | BY ATC
It’s Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2012, Māori Language Week so we thought we’d take the opportunity to provide you with some English translations of Māori words used by the characters in Bruce Mason’s play AWATEA.

We dedicate this guide to New Zealand's beloved author Margaret Mahy.  Thank you for "shining away on places never seen the light before…"

"But I tell you, Mr P, just as sure as I live and breathe, feel it in my very bones, a hundred years from now, people still will read about Timi Manawha and laugh like we done! And that's being a writer! That's literature!"
- Emma Gilhooly, AWATEA

awatea: daylight. (Throughout the play AWATEA, darkness and light are contrasted, both symbolically, in Matt's function for his father, and in a literal sense, since Werihe his blind.  It is the central thread of the whole piece).

hui:  an assembly or group of people meeting together, nearly always accompanied by feasting.  Hui literally means to put or add together; hence congregation. 

kōrero: speech, discussion, talk

whenua: land, country, home

pakaru: shattered, broken, rendered useless

merakara: miracle

tuhituhi: writing

whawhewhawhe: a highly onomatopoeic word, meaning 'busybody'.

rūpahu: n. lie, an East coast word

arohanui: much love