Samoan is a Polynesian language.
The Polynesian languages are a language family spoken in geographical Polynesia and on a patchwork of outliers from south central Micronesia to small islands off the northeast of the larger islands of the southeast Solomon Islands and sprinkled through Vanuatu .. Polynesia. Polynesia. language family. language family. outliers. Polynesian outlier. They are classified as part of the Austronesian family , belonging to the Oceanic branch of that family .. Oceanic. Oceanic languages. Austronesian family. Austronesian languages. Polynesians share many unique cultural traits that resulted from about 1000 years of common development , including common linguistic development , in the Tonga and Samoa area through most of the first millennium BC .. There are approximately forty Polynesian languages .. The most prominent of these are Tahitian , Samoan , Tongan , Maori and Hawaiian .. Tahitian. Tahitian language. Samoan. Samoan language. Tongan. Tongan language. Maori. Maori language. Hawaiian. Hawaiian language. Because the Polynesian islands were settled relatively recently and because internal linguistic diversification only began around 2,000 years ago , their languages retain strong commonalities .. There are still many cognate words across the different islands e.g. tapu , ariki , motu , kava -LRB- Kava culture -RRB- , and tapa as well as Hawaiki , the mythical homeland for some of the cultures .. cognate. cognate. tapu. tapu ( Polynesian culture ). ariki. ariki. motu. Motu ( geography ). kava. kava. Kava culture. Kava culture. tapa. tapa cloth. Hawaiki. Hawaiki. All Polynesian languages show strong similarity , particularly in vocabulary .. The vowels are often stable in the descendant languages , nearly always a , e , i , o and u .. The legendary homeland of the Maori of New Zealand , where w is used instead of v , is called Hawaiki ; in the Cook Islands , where h is replaced with the glottal stop , it is ` Avaiki ; in the Hawaiian Islands , where w is used and k is replaced with the glottal stop , the largest island of the group is named Hawai`i ; in Samoa , where s has not been replaced by h , v is used instead of w , and k is replaced with the glottal stop , the largest island is called Savai'i .. Maori. Maori language. Hawaiian. Hawaiian language. Hawaiki. Hawaiki. Cook Islands. Cook Islands. glottal stop. glottal stop. In the Society Islands , k and ng are replaced by the glottal stop , so the name for the ancestral homeland is pronounced Havai`i .. glottal stop. glottal stop