World Language Map

Where is Samoan spoken?

Samoan (Gagana Samoa) is an Austronesian language, spoken in Samoa and American Samoa. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Samoan is spoken

Samoan is spoken in 2 countries: Samoa and American Samoa. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Samoa100%208,853
American Samoa99%43,456

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Samoan has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Samoan?

Wikidata gives about 416,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2015). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Samoan sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Samoan as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
  4. Oceanic
  5. Central Pacific linkage
  6. Tokalau Fijian
  7. Polynesian
  8. Nuclear Polynesian
  9. Ellicean
  10. Pukapukic
  11. Samoan-Tokelauan
  12. Samoan

Related languages

Other languages in the Samoan-Tokelauan group:

More about Samoan

Codes: ISO 639-3 smo, Glottolog samo1305. Glottolog macroarea: Papunesia.

Questions about Samoan

Where is Samoan spoken?

Samoan is spoken in Samoa and American Samoa. Unicode CLDR puts it at 100% of the population of Samoa, which is about 208,853 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

How many people speak Samoan?

Wikidata gives about 416,000 speakers (Ethnologue, 2015). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Samoan in?

Glottolog places Samoan in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Oceanic, Central Pacific linkage, Tokalau Fijian, Polynesian, Nuclear Polynesian, Ellicean, Pukapukic and Samoan-Tokelauan.

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