Samoan Alphabet & Letters

Samoan, gagana Sāmoa in Samoan itself, was first written down by missionaries of the London Missionary Society, who arrived in 1830 and published the whole Bible in Samoan by 1862. Their alphabet keeps one letter for each sound and lists the vowels first: A E I O U, then the consonants F G L M N P S T V. That is the whole alphabet of native words, fourteen letters. H, K and R follow at the end of the chart for words taken from English and the Bible, such as Kerisimasi (Christmas), Iesu Keriso (Jesus Christ) and Ianuari (January). Children learn the letters from a picture chart with a sung recitation, the Pī Tautau, often in the village pastor's school.

Every Samoan syllable ends in a vowel and consonants never stand side by side, which is why English loanwords grow vowels: a cat (puss) is a pusi, a box a pusa and Christmas Kerisimasi. Vowels sound roughly as in Spanish or Italian, always the same. Stress falls on the second-to-last syllable unless a long vowel pulls it to itself: TA-ma but ta-MĀ.

Samoan alphabet pronunciation: g, the glottal stop and the two registers

One letter surprises visitors: Samoan g is never the g of "go". It is the ng sound of "singer", so Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, is said "Pango Pango", gagana (language) is "ngangana" and tagata (people) is "tangata". The other consonants sound much as English speakers expect; s is always the s of "sun" and v a soft English v.

Samoan has two pronunciation registers. The careful one, tautala lelei ("good speech"), is used for the Bible, church, school, radio and formal speeches, and it is the one the alphabet spells. The colloquial tautala leaga is used in everyday talk and traditional cultural ceremonies; speakers often pronounce t as k and n as the ng sound, so Talofa can come out "Kalofa". Writing almost always keeps the formal spelling, so you will see Talofa on the page whichever way it is said.

Samoan macron and okina: ā ē ī ō ū and the koma liliu ʻ

Two marks carry meaning in Samoan. A macron, called faʻamamafa, marks a long vowel: ā ē ī ō ū, and Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū in capitals. It separates real words: tama is a boy or child, tamā is father. The glottal stop, a catch in the throat like the break in "uh-oh", is a full consonant written with the koma liliu ("turned comma"), the same mark Hawaiian calls the ʻokina: faʻafetai (thank you), Savaiʻi, ʻava (kava). It separates words too: faʻi is a banana, fai means to do or make. The name of the country itself is properly Sāmoa, with a long first a.

In everyday writing, from Facebook posts to newspapers and street signs, both marks are often left out and readers rely on context, so Samoa, Talofa and fa'afetai with a plain apostrophe are all common. Some dictionaries and learner materials use the marks, but macron use remains inconsistent, especially in Samoa. The correct character for the glottal stop is ʻ, modifier letter turned comma, U+02BB. The apostrophe ' and the curly quote ‘ look almost the same but are punctuation rather than letters, so spell checkers and search tools may not treat them as part of the word; if a text should be searchable and correct, use ʻ.

How to type Samoan letters on a phone, Mac and Windows

On a phone, press and hold a vowel and pick the one with the bar on top; the glottal stop is easiest to copy from the grid above and keep in your phone's text replacements (for example, make fa'a turn into faʻa). On a Mac, switch to the ABC – Extended input source and press Option + A, then the vowel, for ā ē ī ō ū; for ʻ, search "turned comma" in the Character Viewer (Ctrl + Cmd + Space) and add it to Favorites.

Windows has no Alt code for these letters. In Word, type the code and press Alt + X: 0101 for ā, 0113 for ē, 012B for ī, 014D for ō, 016B for ū (0100, 0112, 012A, 014C and 016A for the capitals) and 02BB for ʻ. The Māori keyboard that ships with Windows types macron vowels too. In HTML, write ā ē ī ō ū and ʻ for ʻ.

Punctuation follows English: “double quotation marks” outside, ‘single ones’ inside; Alt+0147 and Alt+0148 type “ ” on Windows, Option+[ and Option+Shift+[ on a Mac. Prices in Samoa are in the tālā, written $ or WS$, with 100 sene ¢ to the tālā; both words are Samoan forms of "dollar" and "cent". American Samoa uses the US dollar.

Common Samoan words and phrases

Talofa! is hello, and Talofa lava a warmer, fuller hello; Mālō is an everyday hi that also means well done. Faʻafetai is thank you and faʻafetai tele lava thank you very much. Tōfā is goodbye, and Tōfā soifua a respectful farewell that wishes the other person life. Ioe is yes, Leai no, Faʻamolemole please, Tulou excuse me, said with a slight bow when passing in front of someone. Manuia! wishes good luck and serves as cheers, as in Manuia le aso, have a good day.

Visitors are welcomed with Susu mai, and a chief with Afio mai: Samoan has a respectful vocabulary for chiefs and orators, so the same act often has a polite word and a plain one. Alofa is love, and Ou te alofa ia te oe is I love you. A family is an ʻaiga, a house a fale; a fale tele is an open-sided village meeting house. Samoan is a Polynesian language, a close relative of Tokelauan, Tongan, Tuvaluan, Hawaiian and Māori: Samoan fale is Tongan fale, Māori whare and Hawaiian hale, and it is cousin to Fijian vale. See our Tokelauan, Tongan, Hawaiian, Māori and Fijian collections for those.

Where Samoan is spoken

CLDR, Unicode's locale database, estimates about 250,000 literate, functional users of Samoan in the Samoan islands: around 210,000 in Samoa 🇼🇸, where Samoan is the first language of nearly everyone and official alongside English, and around 43,000 in American Samoa 🇦🇸, where it is official with English too. In Tokelau 🇹🇰 the everyday language is Tokelauan, but Samoan has long been the language of church and the Bible, so a few hundred people use it there. For each place's flag, food and holiday emoji, see our Samoa, American Samoa and Tokelau collections.

Those numbers leave out the large Samoan communities abroad. Samoan is one of the most widely spoken languages in New Zealand after English and Māori, and is spoken across Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Brisbane, Hawaii, California and Utah. New Zealand holds a Samoan Language Week, Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa, each year, usually around Samoa's Independence Day on 1 June.