Samoan students are being confused by the overuse of punctuation marks in Samoan words at school.
Talamua Online reports that this is the view of a member of the Samoan Language Commission which is being supported by education officials, especially the proposal to produce a Dictionary which will address the problem.
“The new dictionary will highlight words that need punctuation marks, like glottal stops and stresses and words that do not need any symbols at all,” said Commission member Rev Ma’auga Motu.
He said the problem is that over the years, teachers have been using too many unnecessary punctuation marks.
“The end result is that, Samoan words look ugly,” said Reverend Motu.
Talamua said the Vice Chancellor of the National University of Samoa, Fui Professor Asofou So’o, applauded the initiative.
He said the dictionary should assist many Samoans on the use of the Samoan vocabulary including the language used by the orators.
Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture, Afamasaga Dr. Karoline Fuata’i supports the initiative.
“Punctuation marks shall be used accordingly, and used at the right time, and that is the aim of the project so that they will not be overly used, or it will be grammatically wrong.”
