Language
The majority of the Chinese coolies came from the Guangdong province and generally spoke Cantonese or Hakka as their primary language. However, their descendants in Samoa have adopted Samoan and English as their mother tongues, while Cantonese is still reportedly spoken by a few elderly people.
Read more about this topic: Chinese In Samoa
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“Language is filled
with words for deprivation
images so familiar
it is hard to crack language open
into that other country
the country of being.”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)
“If fancy then
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do?”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)