Celebrated nationwide Samoan Language Week, this year started on Sunday 29th May through to Saturday 4th June.

This year was special as it marked 60 years of Samoa being independent.

At Newlands Intermediate we celebrated and acknowledged the Samoan language by having a day where students could come dressed in their Samoan traditional attire, learnt some of the language and shared some traditional food from our different cultures.

On Wednesday 1st June, our Tangata Pasifika group celebrated Samoan Language Week. The first thing we did was learn the Samoan National Anthem. People already knew it so we were helping the others. We were working on it for most of the morning and by the end of the day we sounded great.

Here are some of the phrases we learnt on this day:

Talofa (Hello)

O ai lou igoa? (What is your name?)

O lo’u igoa o ______ (My name is _______ )

O a mai oe? (How are you?)

Manuia faafetai (Fine/Well thank you)

‘Ae a ‘oe? (How about you?)

Manuia fo’i fa'afetai (I am fine also thank you)

Tofa (Goodbye)

Our experience of Samoan language week at Tangata Pasifika was really fun and learning about the Samoan culture and language was really interesting, especially for us as Samoan students who would love to know more about our culture and heritage. Our favourite part was the sharing of our traditional foods 😊

We are very proud of being Samoan and by celebrating this week we felt great our culture was being acknowledged and celebrated, even just for the day and we are looking forward to special events like this, and also Tangata Pasifika every Wednesday!

Fa’afetai lava,

Lagā Junior Puepue, Madden Taufale and Jessica Heather (Room 9)