Diacritical Marks and the Samoan Language.

Abstract

T h e Samoan-language community is now widespread in a diaspora that includes New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i, and parts of the continental United States, with a large number of new speakers learning their heritage language in a search for identity and for becoming more connected with their ancestral culture. Rather than acquiring the language informally in traditional family and community interactions, Samoan learners are increasingly found in classroom environments, where they are heavily dependent on written materials such as dictionaries, textbooks, and anthologies. For these learners there is a strong need for the written form of Samoan to be accurate and consistent, but for linguistic and historical reasons, this is not currently the case. There are discrepancies in word composition, irregularities in lexical items, and variations in grammatical structure, but perhaps the most serious issue is the inconsistent use of what has been termed “diacritical markings” or “diacritics. ” 1 First used in the Samoan Islands by Christian missionaries, diacritics were later excluded from written Samoan by policies of the Department of Education of what was then Western Samoa, thus producing generations of heritage speakers who do not view diacritics as significant symbols in Samoan orthography. In recent times, however, with the introduction of the Samoan language into mainstream curricula in New Zealand and Hawai‘i, written materials being produced as resources for learning Samoan typically include diacritics because of the changing nature of language learning among newer generations of Samoan youth. In terms of language transmission and language maintenance, it is critical that this problem in Samoan orthography be resolved.