Samoan

Where it’s spoken

Samoan (Gagana faʻa Samoa) is the official language of Samoa and American Samoa. Significant Samoan-speaking diaspora communities exist in New Zealand (the largest Samoan population outside Samoa), Australia, Hawaii, California, and Utah. About 510,000 people speak it as a first language.

What it sounds like

Samoan has fourteen consonants and five vowels, both short and long. The glottal stop is a phonemic consonant marked by ʻokina. Notably, Samoan has two distinct registers — “good speech” (with t and n) used in formal contexts, schools, and church, and “casual speech” (using k and ng for the same sounds) used in everyday conversation.

How it’s written

Samoan uses the Latin alphabet of 14 letters, with vowel macrons marking length and the ʻokina marking glottal stops. Missionary linguists developed the orthography in the 1830s. Spelling is highly phonemic.

History

Samoan is the closest living relative to Proto-Polynesian and is often used by linguists to reconstruct the migration history of Polynesian peoples. Samoa is sometimes called “the cradle of Polynesia” because of this central position.