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Writer's pictureIosua Ioane Fānene

Talking about things... a mathematical process

The term for the Samoan language is #GAGANA #SĀMOA.


GAGANA means "to talk".


Talk about what exactly?

That's the hidden meaning of GAGANA. Gagana implies talking about business, things of great importance and survival. Afloat on the mighty ocean, the things people talk about all circle back around to the subject of life-and-death decisions--measuring out distances, calculating times, rationing food and water supplies, estimating the spans between the peaks of a wave, the trough and the next peak, which offer clues as to proximity to land... GAGANA is a mathematical term at its core, a language of economy and measured speech prone to encapsulating complex ideas into as few words as possible through the use of metaphor, allusion, rhyme, and wordplay.


The particle -GA is used in counting large quantities of things. For example: Four-ty:

FA (4)

GA (times)

FULU (10)


Five-hundred: LIMA (5) GA (times) LAU (100)


Six-thousand:

ONO (6) GA (times)

AFE (1000)



Now, let's run with the Sanskrit equivalent of GAGANA:


#GAṆANA (गणना)

#GAṆANA means: "calculation", "counting", "enumeration"


It is an accounting term as well in Sanskrit!

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