Samoan Language Resources

Very basic usage

One basic way to use verbs is to say things like 'Ou te 'ai (I eat) or 'E te alu i le ā'oga? (You go to the school?). We'll start with simple sentences like that.

Here are a couple of common verbs:

fia1	»	to want to do something		moe	»	to sleep
siva	»	to dance		'ai	»	to eat

And we will use these two pronouns:

'e

»

you

'ou

»

I

The word te shows present tense. Here are a few examples:

There is also a negative, lē (not / don't), which can be added before the verb.

And of course:

The word i (to) can be used after the verb, but it must be changed to ia₁ if it is used before a proper noun, and iate before a pronoun:

Using tenses (past / present / future)

In Samoan, changing tense does not change the verb. Instead, one of the below words will be used to show whether you are speaking in present, past or future tense. This is a bit like saying 'I do walk' and 'I did walk', instead of 'I walk, I walked'.

We will use the verb 'ai (eat) as an example.

Past	na	Na 'ou 'ai	I ate
	sā2	Sā 'ou 'ai	I was eating
Present	'ua	'Ua 'ou 'ai	I've eaten
	te	'Ou te 'ai	I eat
	'olo'o	'Olo'o 'ou 'ai	I am eating
Future	'ole'ā	'Ole'ā 'ou 'ai	I will eat

The 'ua tense is probably the most common.

With tenses, we can say a few new things:

All of the simple examples above used the te tense, but we can make them more descriptive if we change the tense marker:

These four examples show how to use verbs without a pronoun:

Personal Pronouns (me / you / them)

Personal pronouns let us know who is the subject of a sentence. e.g., “he chased the cat”, “we went to the market”. Here are some things to take note of:

1. Inclusion and exclusion: When using the words for 'we', you need to think of whether the person you are talking to is a part of the group. e.g. 'Should we (including you) go home?' vs 'We (excluding you) came from New Zealand to visit'.
2. Dual pronouns: If you are talking to or about two people, a dual pronoun (marked below with a 2) is used. For larger groups, use the pronouns which are marked with the ∞ sign.
3. Long and short: For most pronouns, there is also a shorter form (shown in italics). These are used differently to the long forms, so don't swap between them willy-nilly.

Table of Personal Pronouns

№	English:	Include listener	Exclude listener
1	me	—	a'u1, 'ou	Speaking about one person
	you	'oe, 'e	—
	him/her	—	ia2
2	us	tā'ua, tā2	mā'ua, mā	Speaking about two people
	you	'oulua, lua2	—
	they	—	lā'ua
3+	our	tātou	matou	Speaking about three or more people.
	your	'outou	—
	their	—	latou

Building sentences with tenses and pronouns

The short forms of the pronouns are used like this:

Tense marker then pronoun then Verb.

For example, we can use the future tense ('ole'ā), and swap between some pronouns:

The exception is the te tense. With this tense, the pronoun comes before the tense marker:

The longer forms of the personal pronouns are used more or less like regular nouns, so the above rule does not apply:

Plural verbs

Like adjectives, many verbs change when they are used on more than one person. For example, the verb savali (to walk) changes to savavali when we are talking about a group of people:

Or using the word moe (sleep):

Other Types of Verbs

This page is not complete! Some content is still being migrated and re-formatted from the old site, so there may be some missing links or content below.

Passive

Reciprocal

Reduplicative