Repetition is everything when you’re a beginner learning Samoan.
If you’re able to hop on a plane and spend months in Samoa, surrounded by the language every day, that’s ideal. But for most people, that’s not realistic. The good news is this: you can still create immersion through intentional repetition. That’s exactly how I learned, and it works.
Here are three simple but powerful things you can start doing right now.
First, pick three Samoan songs that you genuinely like. Not songs you think you should like, but songs you actually enjoy. Listen to them over and over until you know them by heart. Don’t worry about understanding every word at first. Focus on the sounds, the rhythm, and how words are grouped together. Eventually, your ear starts recognizing patterns, and meaning follows.
Second, choose a Samoan movie with English subtitles. Listen to what’s being said, then read the translation at the bottom. This helps you associate vocabulary and expressions with real situations. Watch it the same way we used to watch Friday back in the day—over and over. Eventually, you’ll start saying the lines along with the actors, not because you memorized them, but because they make sense.
Third, pick a few pages from the Tusi Paia and study them repeatedly. The question people always ask is, “How do I know what I’m looking at?” The answer is sentence structure.
That’s how I learned. I stopped trying to memorize random phrases and instead broke sentences down by phrase structure. I learned subject phrases like O le faiaʻoga (the teacher). Then I learned action phrases like Sa savali (was walking). Then I connected them: Sa savali le faiaʻoga. After that, I added location phrases: Sa savali le faiaʻoga i fafo o le fale. I repeated this process over and over until full sentences made sense.
I didn’t want to just regurgitate phrases. I wanted to understand the language, and sentence structure made that possible. That part can be learned in a week. After that, it’s just vocabulary.
I’ve been teaching this method for years and turned it into games like UMA, my Samoan-learning version of UNO. This December only, I created a free printed workbook that comes with the Samoanopoly game. It includes worksheets that mimic UMA and QR codes linking to video lessons for each activity.
The workbook is free for the rest of December with Samoanopoly at TalofaTalk.com. It will be available on Amazon in January 2026—but right now, you can get it free.
