Samoan language in the context of "Savai'i"

Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists 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). Samoa is located 64 km (40 mi; 35 nmi) west of American Samoa, 889 km (552 mi; 480 nmi) northeast of Tonga, 1,152 km (716 mi; 622 nmi) northeast of Fiji, 483 km (300 mi; 261 nmi) east of Wallis and Futuna, 1,151 km (715 mi; 621 nmi) southeast of Tuvalu, 519 km (322 mi; 280 nmi) south of Tokelau, 4,190 km (2,600 mi; 2,260 nmi) southwest of Hawaii, and 610 km (380 mi; 330 nmi) northwest of Niue. The capital and largest city is Apia.

The Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan Islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a Samoan language and Samoan cultural identity. Because of the Samoans' seafaring skills, pre-20th-century European explorers referred to the entire island group, including American Samoa, as the "Navigator Islands". The country became a colony of the German Empire in 1899 after the Tripartite Convention, and was known as German Samoa. German administration ended in August 1914 after New Zealand troops bloodlessly occupied the colony at the start of World War I. New Zealand officially gained control of the region as a League of Nations mandate in 1920, when it became the Territory of Western Samoa. After being converted into a United Nations Trust Territory in 1946, Western Samoa gained independence on 1 January 1962 and changed its name to just Samoa on 4 July 1997.

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF; French: Forum des îles du Pacifique; Fijian: Bose ni Yatu Pasifika; Māori: Te Huinga Moutere o Te Moananui-a-Kiwa; Samoan: Fono a Atumotu o le Pasefika; Tok Pisin: Pasifik Ailan Forum; Tongan: Fakataha 'a e Ngaahi 'Otu Motu Pasifiki) is an inter-governmental organisation which aims to enhance cooperation among countries and territories of Oceania, including formation of a trade bloc and regional peacekeeping operations. It was founded in 1971 as the South Pacific Forum (SPF), and changed its name in 1999 to "Pacific Islands Forum", so as to be more inclusive of the Forum's Oceania-spanning membership of both north and south Pacific island countries, including Australia and New Zealand.

The mission of the Pacific Islands Forum is "to work in support of Forum member governments, to enhance the economic and social well-being of the people of the South Pacific by fostering cooperation between governments and between international agencies, and by representing the interests of Forum members in ways agreed by the Forum". Its decisions are implemented by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), which grew out of the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation (SPEC). As well as its role in harmonising regional positions on various political and policy issues, the Forum Secretariat has technical programmes in economic development, transport and trade. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General is the permanent Chairman of the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP).

American Samoa is an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the south Pacific Ocean. Centered on 14°18′S 170°42′W / 14.3°S 170.7°W / -14.3; -170.7, it is 40 miles (64 km) southeast of the island country of Samoa, east of the International Date Line and the Wallis and Futuna Islands, west of the Cook Islands, north of Tonga, and some 310 miles (500 km) south of Tokelau. American Samoa is the southernmost territory of the United States, situated 2,200 miles (3,500 km) southwest of the U.S. state of Hawaii, and one of two U.S. territories south of the Equator, along with the uninhabited Jarvis Island.

American Samoa consists of the eastern part of the Samoan archipelago – the inhabited volcanic islands of Tutuila, Aunuʻu, Ofu, Olosega and Taʻū and the uninhabited Rose Atoll – as well as Swains Island, a remote coral atoll in the Tokelau volcanic island group. The total land area is 77 square miles (199 km), slightly larger than Washington, D.C.; including its territorial waters, the total area is 117,500 square miles (304,000 km), about the size of New Zealand. American Samoa has a tropical climate, with 90 percent of its land covered by rainforests. As of 2024, the population is approximately 47,400 and concentrated on Tutuila, which hosts the capital and largest settlement, Pago Pago. The vast majority of residents are indigenous ethnic Samoans, most of whom are fluent in the official languages, Samoan and English.

The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.

There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austronesian family. While half of them are spoken in geographical Polynesia (the Polynesian triangle), the other half – known as Polynesian outliers – are spoken in other parts of the Pacific: from Micronesia to atolls scattered in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu. The most prominent Polynesian languages, by number of speakers, are Samoan, Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Hawaiian.

A voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is ⟨n⟩.

The vast majority of languages have either an alveolar or dental nasal. There are a few languages that lack either sound but have [m], such as Yoruba, Palauan, and colloquial Samoan (however, these languages all have [ŋ]. An example of a language without [n] and [ŋ] is Edo). There are some languages (e.g. Rotokas) that lack both [m] and [n].

Voiceless alveolar and dental plosives (or stops) are a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosives is ⟨t⟩. The voiceless dental plosive can be distinguished with the underbridge diacritic, ⟨t̪⟩ and the postalveolar with a retraction line, ⟨t̠⟩, and the extIPA has a double underline diacritic which can be used to explicitly specify an alveolar pronunciation, ⟨t͇⟩.

The [t] sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain [t], and some distinguish more than one variety. Some languages without a [t] are colloquial Samoan (which also lacks an [n]), Abau, and Nǁng of South Africa.

Swains Island (/ˈsweɪnz/; Tokelauan: Olohega Tokelauan pronunciation: [oloˈhɛŋa] ; Samoan: Olosega Samoan pronunciation: [oloˈsɛŋa] ), also known as Jennings Island, is a remote coral atoll in the Tokelau volcanic island group in the South Pacific Ocean. Administered as part of American Samoa since 1925, the island is subject to an ongoing territorial dispute between Tokelau and the United States.

Privately owned by the family of Eli Hutchinson Jennings since 1856, Swains Island was used as a copra plantation until 1967. It has not been permanently inhabited since 2008, but continues to be visited by members of the Jennings family, scientific researchers, and amateur radio operators.

The Samoan Islands (Samoan: Motu o Sāmoa) are an archipelago covering 3,030 km (1,170 sq mi) in the central South Pacific, forming part of Polynesia and of the wider region of Oceania. Administratively, the archipelago comprises all of the Independent State of Samoa and most of American Samoa (apart from Swains Island, which is geographically part of the Tokelau Islands). The land masses of the two Samoan jurisdictions are separated by 64 km (40 mi; 35 nmi) of ocean at their closest points.

The population of the Samoan Islands is approximately 250,000. The inhabitants have in common the Samoan language, a culture known as fa'a Samoa, and an indigenous form of governance called fa'amatai. Samoans are one of the largest Polynesian populations in the world, and most are of exclusively Samoan ancestry.

Tokelauan (/toʊkəˈlaʊən/) is a Polynesian language spoken in Tokelau and historically by the small population of Swains Island (or Olohega) in American Samoa. It is closely related to Tuvaluan and is related to Samoan and other Polynesian languages. Tokelauan has a co-official status with English in Tokelau. There are approximately 4,260 speakers of Tokelauan, of whom 2,100 live in New Zealand, 1,400 in Tokelau, and 17 in Swains Island. "Tokelau" means "north-northeast".

Loimata Iupati, Tokelau's resident Director of Education, has stated that he is in the process of translating the Bible from English into Tokelauan.While many Tokelau residents are multilingual, Tokelauan was the language of day-to-day affairs in Tokelau until at least the 1990s, and is spoken by 88% of Tokelauan residents. Of the 4600 people who speak the language, 1600 of them live in the three atolls of Tokelau – Atafu, Nukunonu and Fakaofo. Approximately 3000 people in New Zealand speak Tokelauan, and the rest of the known Tokelauan speakers are spread across Australia, Hawaii, and the West Coast of the United States. The Tokelauan language closely resembles its more widely spoken and close genealogical relative, Samoan; the two maintain a degree of mutual intelligibility.