When I originally built American Idle, I had a section on it called, "Word of the Week". I built little flash movies to explain Samoan words. The idea was to have a new one every week (duh!), but I couldn't keep it up. It just wasn't sustainable and if I learned one thing being in the Peace Corps, it's the importance of sustainability.

Anyway, I don't want to give up on the idea entirely, because there are some really great Samoan words, and I want to share, because that's the kind of guy I am. I've been playing around with this idea of "Word of the Moment" for long time, and now I'm finally going to do something about it, so here it goes.

Pua'a, as you might already know from reading about keke pua'a means "pig" in Fa'aSamoa. It's got a glottal stop, which can be tricky to pronounce, so I'm going to teach you how to do it.

Think of the word "uh-oh". Say it outloud. Hear the pause in the middle. Now say "ah-ah" in the same way. Add "pooh", like the bear, in front. "pooh ah-ah". Now say it fast and you have pua'a. It's actually not that tough to say.

Now you want to make sure you don't accidentally say "pua'i", because that means "to barf", as in, malie le loto, sa ou pua'i i lou pua'a , which translates to something like, "excuse me, but I seem to have thrown up on your pig."