Gagana Faa Samoa

Samoan, self-called Gagana Sāmoa, is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken on the Samoan Islands and classed in the Samoic branch alongside Tokelauan and Eastern Polynesian tongues such as Māori, Tahitian and Hawaiian. It is an isolating language whose syllables all end in vowels; a reversed comma marks the glottal stop and a macron marks long vowels.

Samoan is distinctive for its registers, with a colloquial K-style alongside formal literary speech and the gagana faʻaaloalo, a ceremonial chiefly vocabulary used by orator chiefs under the matai title system. It remained a spoken language until missionaries of the London Missionary Society began recording it in the Latin script, distributing an orthography in 1834.