T-style

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The consonant system of formal Samoan, differing from that of colloquial Samoan in a few particulars, among them the pronunciation of /t/ as [t]. uncountable

    "In a formal setting with an unknown papālagi visitor, a Samoan would be expected to use the formal t'''-style, but Ali’imalemanu started his performance in k-style and then switched over to t'''-style after a few minutes. Later on when he knew me better he mixed the two styles when he told me stories (and, of course, always used the k-style when we talked together with no recorder on, no matter what the subject was)."

Example

More examples

"In a formal setting with an unknown papālagi visitor, a Samoan would be expected to use the formal t'''-style, but Ali’imalemanu started his performance in k-style and then switched over to t'''-style after a few minutes. Later on when he knew me better he mixed the two styles when he told me stories (and, of course, always used the k-style when we talked together with no recorder on, no matter what the subject was)."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.