Samoan

Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa; ISO 639-1: sm) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian family, spoken chiefly in the Independent State of Samoa, American Samoa, and diaspora communities. It is written in a Latin alphabet in which the macron marks vowel length and the koma liliu (ʻ) marks the phonemic glottal stop; both distinctions can change meaning. Samoan has a socially conditioned T/K speech-register alternation: careful and formal speech generally retains /t/ and /n/, while familiar colloquial speech commonly realizes the corresponding sounds as /k/ and /ŋ/; this is a speech-style contrast, not a difference in recording. Basic clauses are often verb–subject–object, and pronouns distinguish inclusive from exclusive first person as well as singular, dual, and plural number. Possession uses contrasting a- and o-classes, and reduplication is productive in word formation.