What is your favourite loved up pet name for your significant other? It is babe? Baby? Bae? Honey? Hun? Sweetheart? Sweetie? Darling? Dear? So many Samoan couples I know have adopted these English terms of affection, but until quite recently, I had no idea how many mushy nicknames we also have in the Samoan language. […]
How Samoans treat their elders
In general, the Samoan attitude towards aging is pretty similar to other cultures. To us, old age is wisdom and accomplishment. It’s a time to sit back and enjoy the spoils of life. But how do younger Samoans treat our elders? Samoan culture emphasizes alofa (love) and fa’aaloalo (respect). We believe that our elders are […]
The Lord’s Prayer in Samoan (with video)
It’s been a crazy several weeks on this side of the One Samoana screen. I could write a very boring book about the ‘technical issues’ that took this entire site off the interwebs for over a month. (Summary: if you’re going to run a website, find a webhost who loves you. Ours didn’t. We had […]
A Samoan Matai and Language Challenge
I love the Samoan culture the way I love my family: I would protect and defend it with my life I don’t always agree with it and sometimes we fight One aspect of our culture I always seem to be in the ring with is our matai system, or fa’amatai. On the one hand, fa’amatai […]
Fa’alupega and the Samoan lauga
Fa’alupega is often the first building block of a Samoan lauga (speech). When addressing a gathering of people, it is custom for the speaker to acknowledge all the other matai in the room, to greet each of them not just by title name, but with an acknowledgement of their village and recitation of how their […]
Ie Sina – a lost Samoan art
I was back of house at the Melbourne Museum, browsing their hidden Pasifika collection, when I first saw one of these. This is Samoan? I asked. Yes, came the reply… and apparently, when a group of Samoan community elders visited a few weeks earlier, they gasped and shed a few tears at the rare sight […]
Translating Naumati Lagona
Music has been a huge part of my life since, as a very young child, I couldn’t go to sleep without somebody singing to me… and then they must have got sick of it cause next minute I get this portable radio thing for my birthday… To this day I STILL find it easier to […]
A proverb about being late
I’ve been hanging out with my uncle lately. He’s a pretty intense kinda guy. He’s loud, laughs like thunderclaps – or sometimes suffocation – and he tells those long, drawn out jokes with such conviction the anticipation kills you… and then the punchline is hit or miss depending on how well you get Samoan humour. […]
Samoana, Ala Mai: Translating Lota Nu’u
You know how at the end of a long Samoan (usually family) function, someone says the closing prayer then everybody gets up to sing a song together? I love that. Not just because it means we can go home soon and eat the food we’ve already loaded in the car (who does that?) ’cause of […]
Why the word hamo is offensive… but it’s okay! I’ve taken it back.
When I started calling myself Hamo Geek Girl (omg, almost 10 years ago) it made some people uncomfortable. “Do you know the history of the word ‘hamo’?” some asked. “Isn’t that offensive to Samoans?” asked others. Yes I know. Hamo was not my most favourite word, either, but I took it back! For a number […]
