Languages of Vanuatu
The Republic of Vanuatu has the world's highest linguistic density per capita.[1]
| Languages of Vanuatu | |
|---|---|
| Official | English, French, Bislama |
| National | Bislama |
| Indigenous | 138 languages, all Oceanic |
For a population of 0.3 million,[2] 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).
A highly multilingual country
Indigenous languages
There are over one hundred local languages spread over the archipelago (listed below).
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;[1] 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.[3]
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.[4]
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 an English-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,[5] up from about 1% in 1995.[6] Based on the number of sufficiently educated adults, about 62% of the population speaks English as a second language.[7] French is the first language of 0.6% of the population,[5] down from more than 3% if SIL's figures are comparable.[6] About 31% of the population can at least read and write simple sentences in French.[8]
The majority of the country's population (63.2% in 2009)[4] 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.[9] 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.[10]
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:
Ethnologue
Below is the Ethnologue's list of most of the indigenous languages of Vanuatu, which are still spoken or were until recently.[11] It provides links to corresponding Ethnologue entries and to an OLAC list of media resources on the language.[12]
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
- See François et al. (2015:8-9); and also Crowley (2000:50); François (2012:86).
- The estimate is 298,333 for July 2020 (source: “Vanuatu”, CIA World Factbook).
- Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine (2016). Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-19-515246-3.
- François (2012:104).
- “Vanuatu” – CIA World Factbook.
- “Languages of Vanuatu” – 2013 archive from Ethnologue.
Note: the “current” Ethnologue figure for English first language speakers is sourced from the CIA World Factbook. - David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2003
David Crystal, English as a Global Language, 2003.
Note: Both books are by the same author and use the same source data. Either way, this is the reference Ethnologue uses. Note that Ethnologue arrives at a total figure by adding estimates for L1 and L2 speakers from different years, even though these figures are incomparable due to significant population growth in the intervening period. - Estimation des francophones dans le monde en 2015.
Note: the figures don't quite seem to match, but this is Ethnologue's source. - See François et al. (2015).
- Thus while Tryon (1976) lists 113 separate languages, Lynch & Crowley (2001), using different criteria, propose a lower figure of 88 languages, many of which are dialect continua. See the discussion in François et al. (2015:4-7).
- This table lists 112 languages. See François et al. (2015:18-21) for a list of 138 items.
- The bibliographical references that underlie this table can be found with each individual language entry.
References
- Crowley, Terry (2000), "The language situation in Vanuatu" (PDF), Current Issues in Language Planning, 1 (1): 47–132, doi:10.1080/14664200008668005, S2CID 144268250, archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-27, retrieved 2007-08-13
- François, Alexandre (2012), "The dynamics of linguistic diversity: Egalitarian multilingualism and power imbalance among northern Vanuatu languages" (PDF), International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2012 (214): 85–110, doi:10.1515/ijsl-2012-0022, S2CID 145208588.
- François, Alexandre; Franjieh, Michael; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Schnell, Stefan (2015), "The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu", in François, Alexandre; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Franjieh, Michael; Schnell, Stefan (eds.), The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity (PDF), Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access, pp. 1–21, ISBN 9781922185235.
- Lynch, John; Crowley, Terry (2001). Languages of Vanuatu: a new survey and bibliography (PDF). Pacific linguistics 517. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/pl-517. hdl:1885/146135. ISBN 0-85883-469-3.
