Kiwi Tiktoker shares awkward te reo Māori mistake

What a mistake.

Warning: Contains sexual references

A Kiwi TikTok creator has gone viral after sharing how a simple mixup with te reo Māori led to a friend making a very intimate offer, with hilarious results.

Aroha begins the video by telling her followers that she received “the most random” txt message from a friend, clarifying that the friend is Pākehā (this will become crucial later, stick with us).

“Hey! Hope you’ve had a great day,” the friend begins. “You eat tara don’t you?”

If that seems a little personal, then what follows is positively obscene.

“I mean ... I haven’t eaten tara before but there’s a first time for everything right?” Aroha replies.

“Whyyyyyyy?”

“O I thought you liked eating tara,” Aroha’s friend said. “I have a tara.”

“Yes yes you do,” Aroha replied, before helpfully suggesting: “I do too.”

Well, that's a personal question. Photo / @arohak12_

They both have a tara. Photo / @arohak12_

Not realising their mistake, Aroha’s friend pressed on. Children, avert your eyes.

“Do want another one?” the friend asked. “You can eat my tara too if you like. I’m not a big fan of it, it’s a bit bland and goopy.”

If any of our readers are not too flash with their reo then the penny may not have dropped yet, but Aroha’s friend does indeed have a tara, but she was trying to offer a taro instead.

One is a hearty Polynesian root, known to have nurtured generations of strong, robust people. The other is a word for female genitalia in te reo.

So Aroha, who later admitted that she knew exactly what her friend was trying to say, kept stringing her along by asking how her friend’s husband would react to all this tara eating.

Always best to check. Photo / @arohak12_

“Oh, he won’t mind at all! It was his idea I give it to you!” the friend replies.

“Chur what a generous fulla,” Aroha replies.

“He doesn’t like it says it looks & smells funky and tastes rotten!” the friend replies, digging herself ever deeper into this hilarious hole.

“I told him to shut up & be grateful he even gets to eat it when so many go without.”

Aroha then offers some helpful hints on how her friend might keep her tara/taro clean.

“O maybe I didn’t wash it properly? Is that why it was really slimy?”

The pair then discuss the colouration of the ... um ... vegetable, before her friend drops a bombshell that is entirely TMI.

“It could be bruised, Glen was pretty rough with it. I hope it’s still okay to eat!”

Aroha’s response, consisting entirely of emojis, then clued her friend into the fact that they may not be on the same page.

“What’s so funny!? You’ve emoji laughed in every message????”

“You know how I told you to use that Māori dictionary online?” Aroha asks.

“Go on it and search tara.”

So she did, and her response was immediate.

Then the penny dropped. Photo / @arohak12_

“OMFG!!!!!!!”

“It’s a TARO isn’t it?” Aroha asks, before her friend confirms that it is.

“You are NEVER going to let me live this down!”

So, there you go folks. More proof, if you still needed it, that learning te reo Māori can be useful in everyday life.

Or prepare for some really awkward conversations around the dinner table.