SAMOAN VOICE OVER TALENTS NATIVE SPEAKERS - PAGE 1

Samoan language
Native to: Samoan islands
Native speakers: 360,000
Writing system: Latin (Samoan alphabet)
Capital city: Apia
Currency: Tala (WST)
Dialing code: +685
Country code: WS
Population: 194,320
Samoan is a member of the Austronesian family, and more specifically the Samoic branch of the Polynesian subphylum. It is closely related to other Polynesian languages with many shared cognate words such as ali'i, 'ava, atua, tapu and numerals as well as in the name of gods in mythology. Linguists differ somewhat on the way they classify Samoan in relation to the other Polynesian languages. The "traditional" classification, based on shared innovations in grammar and vocabulary, places Samoan with Tokelauan, the Polynesian outlier languages and the languages of Eastern Polynesia, which include Rapanui, M?ori, Tahitian and Hawaiian. Nuclear Polynesian and Tongic (the languages of Tonga and Niue) are the major subdivisions of Polynesian under this analysis. A revision by Marck reinterpreted the relationships among Samoan and the outlier languages. In 2008 an analysis, of basic vocabulary only, from the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database is contradictory in that while in part it suggests that Tongan and Samoan form a subgroup, the old subgroups Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian are still included in the classification search of the database itself.