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Fiafia Samoan: Dabbling in Polynesian | ||
Tags: Dabbling | Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes  Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 17 08 October 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Malo, lava!
E manaia lava le gagana Samoa, ma ua ou fiafia lava i ai. I lived in Samoa for 6 years, and got an fsi 4+ after 3 years, but I am way rusty. It has been 30 years since I spoke Samoan every day, and 10 years since my last long conversation. Learning a language like Samoan is very different from learning a language like Spanish, my current project. I used the John Mayer Samoan book during my Peace Corps training, and I used a Morman Missionary Samoan manual after I got out to my village. I lived in an area with no English for two years, and I basically learned every word in the newspaper until there were no more new words to learn. I wrote a language manual for Peace Corps that was supposed to replace the John Mayer book, but I think it died a quiet death on a shelf in the Peace Corps office, since the Peace Corps officer who was in charge of the project got transferred, and the person who replaced her was not interested. I wrote a textbook for the American Samoan government schools also. Knowing Samoan has been one of the great joys of my life. The high point of my Samoan language use was a formal speech I made at a friend's wedding; several chiefs from my village helped me prepare, and the chiefs from the village my friend's bride came from just about fell out of the fale when I took off using all of the secret vocabulary people use in formal speeches in Samoa. steve, known in the old days as sitivi 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4872 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 10 of 17 09 October 2012 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's great to see someone else interested in Samoan! There are some resources out there, but not everything I listed is very helpful. I listed almost everything I found that might be of help. The Peace Corps manuals seem unavailable lately, but I've downloaded them. If you start studying and would like to use them I could e-mail them to you. Actually, I think there are more resources for Maori, but Samoan seems more useful overall. I can't tell you much about Samoan grammar as of yet. So far I've only glanced at it. The wikipedia article on the Samoan language provides quite a good overview, though.
Malo lava Sitivi! Unfortunately I haven't studied any Samoan yet, so I have no idea what your sentence means (I only understand "gagana Samoa" and "fiafia" :)). But I'm really happy that you replied - I think you're the only forum member who speaks Samoan. I've browsed the forum before and came across your Spanish thread where you talked about learning Samoan. It's very interesting to read about your experiences. I've read about oratory speech and it sounds like a great experience to be able to hold one of those speeches! Is there any way to get a hold of your language manual/textbook? And would it be okay if I ask you questions if I don't understand a grammar point (once I actually start studying)? Edited by druckfehler on 09 October 2012 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 17 10 October 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sure you can ask questions. I just said that Samoan is beautiful/great and that I like
it. I wrote my two Samoan books long before the Internet, and right at the dawn of PC's, so I don't have a digital copy. Since I wrote them, I've lived in three other countries, and I have lost my copies. It makes me sad that I didn't preserve them. The Mayer book was the first thing I used to learn Samoan, and after I memorized the "sample sentences" with each lessons, I started off talking to people. The old, yellow, Morman missionary manual was a better resource in most ways. I worked through it pretty completely. It's pretty funny that an old Pagan/Atheist like me would learn how to proselytize for the Morman church in Samoan, but I still remember some of the little speeches I learned. The Morman missionaries generally learned Samoan to a higher level than Peace Corps volunteers. They did an excellent job of language learning. I would be glad to help any way I can. Let me see if I can reconnect with some of my friends in Samoa to see what resources are available there. I reconnected last year with many of my old friends right after the tsunami. It was pretty weird to see pictures of a tsunami wave rolling through Pagopago that were taken from a window a few feet from where my desk (on the second floor!) used to be when I worked there. Sitivi Edited by sfuqua on 10 October 2012 at 12:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jarvis1000 Diglot Groupie United States want2speakthai.com Joined 4892 days ago 74 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Thai Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 17 13 January 2013 at 12:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I decided 2013 is my year to learn samoan. I have a samoan Father in law and my kids are
all 1/4 samoan. Anyway This thread has been fantastic for me already. I downloaded all the pdf pages of the mormon missionary one, and combined them. I have them at my website here: Samoan Resources. it's alittle bit more useful than looking up each page manually at their website I have the gagana samoa, the PCV silent method and the other PCV method as well. Hard part is finding alot of comprehensible audio of Samoan. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4872 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 13 of 17 13 January 2013 at 2:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey Jarvis,
great to read that you're going to learn Samoan! I hope I'll be able to dedicate some time to this in the future. I already ordered the textbook Gagana Samoa and think it looks great. But even if I'm very curious and excited about the language, there are others that seem more useful and just as interesting at the moment. Nonetheless, I'm very glad that the list of resources is helpful. Your site is great! I thought I'd go crazy if I download all those single pdf-pages... I'll add your site to the list, if you don't mind. It's true that audio is scarce, especially audio with transcript. Maybe the children stories listed under "Listening - Reading" will help a little. If you plan to keep a log here or on your website, I'd be very interested in reading about your study experiences! Good luck and have fun! Edited by druckfehler on 13 January 2013 at 2:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 17 13 January 2013 at 6:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I memorized all of the sentences in Mayer's book back in the day when I was just starting Samoan. I know many of the people who were involved in making Gagana Samoa, but I haven't worked with it.
I've found that learning Spanish outside of an immersion situation is a very different thing from learning Samoan in an immersion situation. I think you will need a big bunch of input of spoken Samoan that will be hard to get. With skype and the Internet, who knows? The Bible and the Book of Morman are big chunks of well translated Samoan; I wonder if anybody has recorded them. The Morman church has some amazing resources; they might support a language learner. I kept my copies of the Bible and the Book of Morman in Samoan right up until a flood hit our apartment last July. I may get copies again. One small bit of advice. There are two ways of pronouncing Samoan, formal and informal. Most Samoans use the "K", the informal pronunciation, most of the time. Many foreigners who try to learn Samoan also try to use the "K" pronunciation to be just like the native speakers. Most native speakers find this ridiculous. The very best nonnative speakers, code switch just as the native speakers do, but you should stick to the formal pronunciation, the "T", until you are advanced. For a foreigner, there really isn't any absolute need to use the "K" pronunciation ever, except may when you are swearing... It is trivial to learn to understand the "K" even when you use the "T". Ou te fiafia lava i teineiti Samoa (T) Ou ke fiafia lava i keigeiki Samoa (K). The "K" is never written. If you speak Samoan, and you do another few sound changes, you can produce something that sounds like Hawaiian, and which will fake people out who don't speak Hawaiian well. My Hawaiian professor at University of Hawaii and I used to communicate pretty well with her speaking Hawaiian and me speaking my fake Hawaiian. Tongan is somewhat intelligible if you speak Samoan. The languages of Tuvalu and Tokelau are close enough to drink beer, talk about sports and girls, and laugh at how funny each others language sounds (they are very close). sitivi Edited by sfuqua on 13 January 2013 at 6:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jarvis1000 Diglot Groupie United States want2speakthai.com Joined 4892 days ago 74 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Thai Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 17 13 January 2013 at 7:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I typically write at my page, but I technically have a log here when I started Spanish.
I haven't decided if I would keep a separate log here or not. I used a program called wget to download all the pages. Then a simple pdf consolidator program to put them together. I am glad I could make it useful for others. I have the Samoan BoM on my ipod but not the bible. Mormon church is probably the largest group of text/audio that I have found, that also has a English texts as well. Anyway, my father in law has said that living in New Zealand, which is where my wife is from, has allowed him to understand Tongan and Mauri. He told me that it's a bit like hearing a new accent with the occasional word change. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 17 16 January 2013 at 6:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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The BoM, excellent! I remember it well. Faauta!
Wow, Tongan was always too hard for me to do more than just get the gist. Maori, both the New Zealand and Tahitian versions, always sounded way cool, but I could only pick out individual words. Of course I'm a nonative speaker of Samoan. Interestingly enough, in rapid speech, the Samoan L gets very close to to Tahitian R, although almost nobody thinks of in that way. I don't really know who I should thank, but I really owe the Morman church a thank you. Not only did they help me learn Samoan, but I later developed an interest in genealogy, and their resources are absolutely amazing. I was able to follow one of my ancestral lines way back past 1600, based mostly on their research. Thanks, Church of Latter Day Saints! steve edited to fix punctuation Edited by sfuqua on 16 January 2013 at 6:11am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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