ABSTRACT
Samoan is a language of the Central and Western Pacific, and belongs to the Samoic-Outlier branch of the Nuclear-Polynesian sub-group of the large Austronesian family. It is spoken by about 450,000 people in Samoa, New Zealand, and other parts of the Pacific area. Since 1962 Samoan has been the official language (along with English) of Samoa (previously known as Western Samoa), and it is used for education and journalism; there are several newspapers and periodicals. A divergent formal register of the language co-exists with the everyday colloquial described here. Literacy in Samoan dates from the 1830s, when work began on the translation of the Bible. The rich corpus of Samoan folk literature was preserved and transmitted orally.
