Samoan literature Samoan literature Samoan literature can be divided into oral (pre-colonial and post-colonial) and written literatures, in the Samoan language and in English or English translation, and is from the Samoa Islands of independent Samoa and American Samoa, and Samoan writers in diaspora. Samoan as a written language emerged after 1830 when Tahitian and English missionaries from the London Missionary Society, working with Samoan chiefly orators, developed a Latin script based Samoan written language. Before this, there were "logologo" (tapa signs) and "tatau" (tattoo signs) but no phonetic written form. Pre-colonial and post-colonial Samoan oral literature includes "solo" (poetic narratives), "fa'alupega"
Pākehā , the Māori word for "pig", and , one of the Māori words for "flea", and therefore expresses derogatory implications. There is no etymological or linguistic support for this notion—like all Polynesian languages, Māori is generally very conservative in terms of vowels; it would be extremely unusual for "pā-" to derive from "". The word itself may come from the proto-polynesian root "*puaka", known in every Polynesian language (" in Tongan, Uvean, Futunian, Rapa, Marquisian, Niuean, Rarotongan, Tokelauan, and Tuvaluan; it evolved to the later form in Samoan, Tahitian, some Rapa dialects, and Hawaiian); or it might be borrowed or