Samoan ( or , ) is a Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language, alongside English, in both jurisdictions. It is widely spoken across the Pacific region, heavily so in New Zealand and in Australia and the United States. Among the Polynesian languages, Samoan is the most widely spoken by a number of native speakers.
Samoan is spoken by approximately 260,000 people in the archipelago and with many Samoans living in diaspora in a number of countries, the total number of speakers worldwide was estimated at 510,000 in 2015. It is the third-most widely spoken language in New Zealand, where 2.2% of the population, 101,900 people, were able to speak it as of 2018.
The language is notable for the phonological differences between formal and informal speech as well as a ceremonial form used in Samoan oratory.
Classification Samoan is an analytic, isolating language. It is a member of the Austronesian family and is considered part of the Samoic branch of the Polynesian subphylum. It is closely related to other Polynesian languages with many shared cognate words such as aliʻi, ʻava, atua, tapu and numerals as well as in the name of gods in mythology.
Linguists differ somewhat on the way they classify Samoan in relation to the other Polynesian languages. The "traditional" classification, based on shared innovations in grammar and vocabulary, places Samoan with Tokelauan, the Polynesian outlier languages and the languages of Eastern Polynesia, which include Rapanui, Māori, Tahitian and Hawaiian. Nuclear Polynesian and Tongic (the languages of Tonga and Niue) are the major subdivisions of Polynesian under this analysis. A revision by Marck reinterpreted the relationships among Samoan and the outlier languages. In 2008 an analysis, of basic vocabulary only, from the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database is contradictory in that while in part it suggests that Tongan and Samoan form a subgroup, the old subgroups Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian are still included in the classification search of the database itself.
Geographic distribution
There are approximately 470,000 Samoan speakers worldwide, 50 percent of whom live in the Samoan Islands.Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. "Samoan". Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
Thereafter, the greatest concentration is in New Zealand, where there were 101,937 Samoan speakers at the 2018 census, or 2.2% of the country's population. Samoan is the third-most spoken language in New Zealand after English and Māori.
According to the 2021 census in Australia conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Samoan language is spoken in the homes of 49,021 people.
US Census 2010 shows more than 180,000 Samoans reside in the United States, which is triple the number of people living in American Samoa, while slightly less than the estimated population of the island nation of Samoa – 193,000, as of July 2011.
Samoan Language Week (Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa) is an annual celebration of the language in New Zealand supported by the government and various organisations including UNESCO. Samoan Language Week was started in Australia for the first time in 2010.
Phonology The Samoan alphabet consists of 14 letters, with three more letters (H, K, R) used in loan words. The ( or ʻokina) is used for the glottal stop.
Aa, Āā Ee, Ēē Ii, Īī Oo, Ōō Uu, Ūū Ff Gg Ll Mm Nn Pp Ss Tt Vv (Hh) (Kk) (Rr) ‘ , , , , , () () ()
Vowels Vowel length is phonemic in Samoan; all five vowels also have a long form denoted by the macron. For example, tama means child or boy, while tamā means father.
Monophthongs + Monophthongs Short Long Front Back Front BackClose Mid Open
Diphthongs are .
The combination of u followed by a vowel in some words creates the sound of the English w, a letter not part of the Samoan alphabet, as in uaua (artery, tendon).
is reduced to in only a few words, such as mate or maliu 'dead', vave 'be quick'.
Consonants In formal Samoan, used for example in news broadcasts or sermons, the consonants are used. In colloquial Samoan, however, merge as and is pronounced .
The glottal stop is phonemic in Samoan. Its presence or absence affects the meaning of words otherwise spelled the same, e.g. = from, originate from; = sickness, illness. The glottal stop is represented by the ("inverted comma"), which is recognized by Samoan scholars and the wider community. The is often replaced by an apostrophe in modern publications. Use of the apostrophe and macron diacritics in Samoan words was readopted by the Ministry of Education in 2012 after having been abandoned in the 1960s.
is pronounced as a flap following a back vowel () and preceding an ; otherwise it is . is less sibilant (hissing) than in English. are found in loan words.
+ ConsonantsLabialAlveolarVelarGlottalNasal Plosive () Fricative ()Lateral Rhotic ()
The consonants in parentheses are only present in words borrowed from English and colloquial Samoan.
Foreign words
Loanwords from English and other languages have been adapted to Samoan phonology:
/k/ is retained in some instances (Christ = , club = , coffee = ), and has become in rare instances (such as , from the English stocking). /ɹ/ becomes [ɾ] in some instances (e.g. Christ = , January = , number = ), and [l] in others (January = , herring = ). /d/ becomes [t] (David = , diamond = ). /ɡ/ becomes [k] in some cases (gas = ), while /tʃ/, /ʃ/ and /dʒ/ usually become [s] (Charles = , Charlotte = , James = ). /h/ is retained at the beginning of some proper names (Herod = ), but in some cases becomes an 's' (hammer = ), and is omitted in others (herring = , half-caste = ) /z/ becomes [s] (Zachariah = ) /w/ becomes [v] (William = ) /b/ becomes [p] (Britain = , butter = )
Stress Stress generally falls on the penultimate mora; that is, on the last syllable if that contains a long vowel or diphthong or on the second-last syllable otherwise.
Verbs formed from nouns ending in a, and meaning to abound in, have properly two aʻs, as (), , , but are written with one.
In speaking of a place at some distance, the accent is placed on the last syllable; as , he is at Safotu. The same thing is done in referring to a family; as Sa Muliaga, the family of Muliaga, the term referring to a wide extended family of clan with a common ancestor. So most words ending in , not a sign of a noun, as , , , and . So also all words ending in a diphthong, as , , .
In speaking the voice is raised, and the emphasis falls on the last word in each sentence.
When a word combines with an affix, stress is shifted forward. For example: ('love'), ('loving' or 'showing love'), ('beloved').
Reduplicated words have two accents. For example: , 'mud'; and , 'twilight'. Compound words may have even three or four, according to the number of words and affixes of which the compound word is composed; as , 'to be engulfed'.
The articles and are unaccented. When used to form a pronoun or participle, and are contractions for , , and so are accented; as , 'the owner' (literally 'the one whose is the thing'), instead of . The sign of the nominative , the prepositions , and the euphonic particles and , are unaccented; as in ('we two will go to you').
, the sign of the imperative, is accented on the ultima; , the sign of the subjunctive, on the penultima. The preposition is accented on the ultima, the pronoun on the penultima.
Phonotactics Samoan syllable structure is (C)V, where V may be long or a diphthong. A sequence VV may occur only in derived forms and compound words; within roots, only the initial syllable may be of the form V. Metathesis of consonants is frequent, such as for 'scent', for 'to call', but vowels may not be mixed up in this way.
Every syllable ends in a vowel. No syllable consists of more than three sounds, one consonant and two vowels, the two vowels making a diphthong; as , , . Roots are sometimes monosyllabic, but mostly disyllabic or a word consisting of two syllables. Polysyllabic words are nearly all derived or compound words; as from 'sit, seat' and , 'difficult of access'; , from , 'to attend', and , 'fire; hearth; making to attend to the fire'; , '(history) stories placed in order', , 'communal house for receiving guests'.
Grammar
Morphology
Personal pronouns Like many Austronesian languages, Samoan has separate words for inclusive and exclusive we, and distinguishes singular, dual, and plural. The root for the inclusive pronoun may occur in the singular, in which case it indicates emotional involvement on the part of the speaker.
singulardualplural 1st person exclusive , , inclusive , 2nd person , , 3rd person /
In formal speech, fuller forms of the roots , , and are , , and .
Articles Articles in Samoan do not show the definiteness of the noun phrase as do those of English but rather specificity.
singular plural specific ∅ non-specific
The singular specific article has frequently, erroneously, been referred to as a "definite" article, such as by Pratt, often with an additional vague explanation that it is sometimes used where English would require the indefinite article. As a specific, rather than a definite article, it is used for specific referents that the speaker has in mind (specificity), regardless of whether the listener is expected to know which specific referent(s) is/are intended (definiteness). A sentence such as , could thus, depending on context, be translated into English as "A canoe appears", when the listener or reader is not expected to know which canoe, or "The canoe appears", if the listener or reader is expected to know which canoe, such as when the canoe has previously been mentioned.
The plural specific is marked by a null article: 'the person', 'people'. (The word in these examples is not an article but a "presentative" preposition. It marks noun phrases used as clauses, introducing clauses or used as appositions etc.)
The non-specific singular article is used when the speaker doesn't have a particular individual of a class in mind, such as in the sentence , 'Cut me a stick', whereby there is no specific stick intended. The plural non-specific article is the plural form and may be translated into English as 'some' or 'any', as in , 'Cut me some sticks'.
In addition, Samoan possesses a series of diminutive articles.
+ Singular Plural Specific diminutive-emotional / (Non-)specific diminutive-partitive / Specific diminutive / / Non-specific diminutive / /
Nouns Names of natural objects, such as men, trees and animals, are mostly primitive nouns, e.g. , 'the sun'; , 'the person'; , 'the taro'; , 'the fish'; also manufactured articles, such as , 'an axe', , 'canoe', , 'spear', , 'house', etc.
Some nouns are derived from verbs by the addition of either , , , , or : such as , 'to chase'; , 'chasing'; , 'to fill the hand'; , 'a handful'; , 'to spit'; , 'spittle'; , 'to bury'; , 'the part buried'. These verbal nouns have an active participial meaning; e.g. , 'the building of the house'. Often they refer to the persons acting, in which case they govern the next noun in the genitive with ; , contracted into , 'those who build the house, the builders'. In some cases verbal nouns refer to either persons or things done by them: , 'the getting of taro', or 'the party getting the taro', or 'the taro itself which has been gotten'. The context in such cases decides the meaning. Sometimes place is indicated by the termination; such as , 'to sleep'; , 'a sleeping-place; a bed'. is either 'the bathing-place' or 'the party of bathers'. The first would take after it to govern the next noun, , 'the bathing-place of the village'; the latter would be followed by , , 'the bathing-place of the girls'.