Languages of Vanuatu

The Republic of Vanuatu has the world's highest linguistic density per capita.

For a population of 0.3 million, Vanuatu is home to 138 indigenous Oceanic languages.

In addition, modern history has brought new languages, including the country's three official languages: English, French, and Bislama.

Even more languages have been brought by recent migrations (e.g. Samoan, Hakka Chinese, Mandarin Chinese).

The linguistic situation in Vanuatu

Indigenous languages

There are over one hundred local languages spread over the archipelago ( listed below), all of them belonging to the Austronesian family of languages.

Vanuatu is the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world: it currently shows an average of about 1,760 speakers for each indigenous language, and went through a historical low of 565;See François ''et al.'' ( 2015:8-9); and also Crowley (2000:50); François (2012:86). only Papua New Guinea comes close. Some of these languages are very endangered, with only a handful of speakers, and indeed several have become extinct in recent times. Generally however, despite the low numbers for most of the indigenous languages, they are not considered especially vulnerable to extinction.

Bislama

Bislama, a creole language derived from English, similar to Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and other nearby creoles, is the first language of many urban ni-Vanuatu, that is, the residents of Port Vila and Luganville; it is the most common second language elsewhere in the Vanuatu islands.

In recent years, the use of Bislama as a first language has considerably encroached on indigenous languages, whose use in the population has receded from 73.1 to 63.2 percent between 1999 and 2009.François (2012:104).

Out of the three official languages, Bislama is the most spoken in Vanuatu, followed by English, and lastly French.

English and French

From the times when Vanuatu was a British-French condominium, there is still an unofficial separation line between regions where English or French are taught at school. English is the first language of about 2% of the population,“Vanuatu”
– CIA World Factbook. up from about 1% in 1995.“Languages of Vanuatu”
– 2013 archive from Ethnologue.
''Note: the “current” Ethnologue figure for English first language speakers is sourced from the CIA World Factbook.'' Based on the number of sufficiently educated adults, about 62% of the population speaks English as a second language. French is the first language of 0.6% of the population, down from more than 3% if SIL's figures are comparable. About 31% of the population can at least read and write simple sentences in French.

The majority of the country's population (63.2% in 2009) speak an indigenous language as their first language, with Bislama as a second language. As for English and French, they belong to a third circle, in spite of their official status.

List of Vanuatu’s indigenous languages

Vanuatu is home to more than a hundred indigenous languages: a recent count lists 138. Among them, three became extinct in recent decades. Many are named after the island they are spoken on, though some of the larger islands have several different languages. Espiritu Santo and Malakula are linguistically the most diverse, with about two dozen languages each.

Some language names refer to networks of dialects rather than unified languages. Uripiv, for example, is a dialect continuum spoken across several islands in Malampa Province. In such cases, the decision as to how many languages should be counted is notoriously difficult, and sometimes the object of controversy. The number of 112 listed below may differ from other counts proposed in the literature, depending partly on these difficulties.

All indigenous languages of Vanuatu are Oceanic. Three are Polynesian languages of the Futunic group: ''Emae'', '' Mele-Fila'' and '' Futuna-Aniwa''. The remaining languages belong to these three groups of the Southern Oceanic branch of Oceanic:
* North Vanuatu
* Central Vanuatu
* South Vanuatu

Ethnologue

Below is the '' Ethnologue's'' list of most of the indigenous languages of Vanuatu, which are still spoken or were until recently. It provides links to corresponding Ethnologue entries and to an OLAC list of media resources on the language.The bibliographical references that underlie this table can be found with each individual language entry.

Tip: Click on the column title to change the sort order.

François ''et al.'' (2015)

The following list of 138 Vanuatu languages is from François ''et al.'' ( 2015:18-21).

Notes

References

*
*.
* .
*

Further reading

* Tryon, D.T. ''New Hebrides languages: An internal classification''. C-50, vi + 550 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1976.
*Tryon, D.T. ''"The Languages of the New Hebrides: Internal and External Relationships". In Wurm, S.A. and Carrington, L. editors, Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings''. C-61:877-902. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1978.
*Tryon, D.T. and Gly, R. ''Gazetteer of New Hebrides place names/Nomenclature des noms geographiques des Nouvelles-Hebrides. D-15, xxxvi + 188 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1979.

External links

Ethnologue report for Vanuatu, including maps


(source: François ''et al.'' 2015).

{{Southern Oceanic languages