Languages of Samoa
Independent state of Samoa, Malotuto’atasi o Samoa i Sisifo. 199,000. Samoan 93%, mixed 7%. National or official languages: Samoan, English. Literacy rate: 97%. Information mainly from N. Besnier 1992; S. Wurm and S. Hattori 1981. The number of individual languages listed for Samoa is 2. Of those, both are living languages.
| English | [eng]
200 in Samoa (2004).
Classification: Indo-European, Germanic, West, English
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| Samoan | [smo]
199,000 in Samoa (1999). Population total all countries: 369,957. Also in American Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga, United States.
Dialects: No significant dialect variation, but important register-based distinctions in phonology. Lexical similarity: 70% with Wallisian [wls], 67% with Rarotongan [rar], 66% with Tongan [ton], 62% with Paumotu.
Classification: Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central-Eastern Oceanic, Remote Oceanic, Central Pacific, East Fijian-Polynesian, Polynesian, Nuclear, Samoic-Outlier, Samoan
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