Samoan

How missionaries wrote Samoan down

Samoan had no written form until the early to middle 1800s, when missionaries began recording it for religious texts in the Latin script. The London Missionary Society distributed an orthography in 1834 and had a printing press running by 1839. The first complete Bible in Samoan, Tusi Paʻia, 'Sacred Book', came out in 1862. George Pratt, a missionary who lived 40 years at Matautu on Savaiʻi, worked on it, and it marks some words with diacritics and leaves others bare.

Why the ʻokina and the macron matter

The glottal stop changes meaning, so mai is 'from' and maʻi is 'sickness'. It is written with the koma liliu, an inverted comma, often replaced by an apostrophe in print. A macron marks each of the five long vowels, so tama is 'child' and tamā is 'father'. The Ministry of Education dropped both marks in the 1960s and brought them back in 2012.

The letter g stands for the ng sound of English sing, which is why Pago Pago is said [ˈpaŋo ˈpaŋo]. H, k and r appear only in loanwords.

When Samoan speakers change register

Formal Samoan, heard in news broadcasts and sermons, keeps t, n and ng apart. In colloquial speech n and ng merge and t is said as k. A third register, gagana faʻaaloalo, 'dignified language', carries classical terms and a vocabulary tied to the orator chiefs. People use it to address their matai chief or those of higher status, and chiefs use it among themselves at funerals, weddings, title bestowals and village councils.

Where Samoan is spoken beyond the islands

Speakers worldwide were estimated at 510,000 in 2015. The 2018 census of New Zealand counted 101,937 Samoan speakers, 2.2% of the population, and New Zealand holds a Samoan Language Week each year. In Australia the 2021 census found Samoan spoken in the homes of 49,021 people.