Samoan Taught at Pacific Arts Festival

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In an intimate classroom setting, Guam residents and visiting delegates had the opportunity to learn some of the basics of the Samoan language yesterday at the Agana Shopping Center.

Entitled “Samoan 101: Introduction to Samoan language,” American Samoa delegate John Patu, a lecturer at the University of Hawaii, led the class of about a dozen into the topic of the indigenous Samoan language.

Patu’s first language is Samoan and is what he grew up speaking, only learning to speak English at 10 years old.

For an hour, Patu lectured on the Samoan alphabet, pronunciations and common phrases used back home in American Samoa and Samoa, too.

While Samoans in both the independent country and U.S. territory speak the same native language, they do differ in their dialects and English translations.

Like indigenous languages across the world, the Samoan language has changed over time. With the different outside influences and native mixes, the indigenous language of Samoa, while thousands of years old has changed, too.

“It’s changed a lot over time. Even with the accents, a lot of the usage has changed. For Samoans, because much of the language has only been documented since the 1800s, there isn’t much evidence of historic Samoan language that has ever been recorded,” Patu said.

According to Patu, even though Samoan is more popular and largely spoken, English is still used for instruction in schools and in government work.

As a lecturer at the University of Hawaii, Patu said he’s met a lot of Samoans who have migrated to Hawaii for a better education.

With the influx of migrants, he’s noticed a change in how many younger people are speaking the native language and that it’s been decreasing, with more of them speaking English, he said.

“You see a lot of changes arising today. For example, with language, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, we have a lot of kids coming straight from American Samoa and a lot of them speak English more than Samoan,” he said.

Even though his presentation was a little late in the FestPac schedule, Patu said he was glad that people came out yesterday and he is hopeful that more will be attending the language seminars throughout the week, he said.

While indigenous languages have been a small part of this year’s FestPac, Patu said he hopes that indigenous language will play a bigger part in future festivals.

He would like to see more events, workshops and general incorporation of the literary art of indigenous languages.

“I’m always willing to share with whoever’s open to learning, especially to people who are into it, who are willing to give their time to the art of language. I’ve seen a lot of interest in it, so by providing the space, time and opportunity for it here on Guam, you really want to take advantage of it.”

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