Austronesian · ISO 639-3 smo · sm
Samoan Language Gagana faʻa Sāmoa
Samoan is an Austronesian language spoken by about 415,720 people in 4 countries. It is an official language of Samoa and American Samoa. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Samoan is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Samoan
About the Samoan language
Samoan (Gagana faʻa Sāmoa) is spoken by about 415,720 people, which makes it the 502nd most spoken language in the world — just behind Luxembourgish (420,000) and ahead of Jola-Fonyi (410,000). It belongs to the Austronesian language family and, more precisely, to the Samoan-Tokelauan group within the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch.
Where is Samoan spoken?
Samoan is used in 4 countries. The largest communities live in Samoa (208,853), New Zealand (113,546), American Samoa (43,456) and Tokelau (329). More than half of the population speaks it in Samoa and American Samoa — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Samoan: Samoa 100% (208,853), New Zealand 2.2% (113,546), American Samoa 99% (43,456) and Tokelau 20% (329).
Samoan is an official language in 2 countries: Samoa and American Samoa.
Writing system and status
Samoan is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Tokelau, Tuvalu, Maori, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Tonga (Tonga Islands) and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 sm, ISO 639-3 smo.
Frequently asked questions about Samoan
How many people speak Samoan?
Where is Samoan spoken?
In which countries is Samoan an official language?
What language family does Samoan belong to?
What is Samoan called in Samoan?
Is Samoan an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.