Geographic Distribution
There are approximately 370,000 Samoan speakers worldwide, 69 per cent of whom live in the Samoan Islands. Thereafter, the greatest concentration is in New Zealand, where people of Samoan ethnicity comprise the largest group after New Zealand European, Māori, and Chinese: the 2006 New Zealand census recorded 95,428 speakers of the Samoan language, and 141,103 people of Samoan ethnicity. Among ethnic Samoans in New Zealand, 70.5 percent (87,109 people) could speak Samoan. Samoan is the third most commonly spoken language in New Zealand after English and Māori. The majority of Samoans in New Zealand (66.4 per cent) reside in the commercial capital, Auckland. Of those who speak Sāmoan, 67.4 percent live in Auckland, and 70.4 percent of people who are both of Samoan ethnicity and Samoan speakers live in that city.
According to the Australian census of 2006, there were 38,525 speakers of Samoan in Australia, and 39,992 people of Samoan ancestry.
Samoan Language Week (Vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa) is an annual celebration of the language in New Zealand supported by the government and various organisations including UNESCO. Samoan Language Week was started in Australia for the first time in 2010.
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“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)