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Samoan (Gagana faʻa Sāmoa or Gagana Sāmoa, pronounced [ŋaˈŋana ˈsaːmʊa]) 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 .
The contemporary classification of the Polynesian languages began with certain observations by Andrew Pawley in 1966 based on shared innovations in phonology, vocabulary and grammar showing that the East Polynesian languages were more closely related to Samoan than they were to Tongan, calling Tongan and its nearby relative Niuean "Tongic" and ...
The population of the Samoan Islands is approximately 250,000. [1] The inhabitants have in common the Samoan language, a culture known as fa'a Samoa, and an indigenous form of governance called fa'amatai. [2] Samoans are one of the largest Polynesian populations in the world, and most are of exclusively Samoan ancestry. [3]
Samoans or Samoan people (Samoan: tagata Sāmoa) are the Indigenous Polynesian people of the Samoan Islands, an archipelago in Polynesia, who speak the Samoan language.The group's home islands are politically and geographically divided between the Independent State of Samoa and American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States of America.
1934 Sketch map showing the central position of the Samoa Islands in the Pacific. Linguistically, the Samoan language belongs to the Polynesian sub-branch of the Austronesian language family, which is thought by linguists to have originated in Taiwan. According to oral tradition, Samoa and Polynesian share a common ancestor: Tagaloa. [2]
Samoa, [note 1] officially the Independent State of Samoa [note 2] and known until 1997 as Western Samoa (Samoan: Sāmoa i Sisifo), is an island country in Polynesia, consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima); and several smaller, uninhabited islands, including the Aleipata Islands (Nuʻutele, Nuʻulua, Fanuatapu and Namua).
The Samoic–Outlier languages, also known as Samoic languages, are a purported group of Polynesian languages, encompassing the Polynesian languages of Samoa, Tuvalu, American Samoa, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, and Polynesian outlier languages in New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and the Federated States of Micronesia.
Something of, from, or related to Samoa, a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands; Something of, from, or related to American Samoa, a United States territory in the Samoan Islands; Samoan language, the native language of the Samoan Islands; Samoans, a Polynesian ethnic group of the Samoan Islands