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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; [1] only Papua New Guinea comes close.
François (2011) recognizes 17 languages spoken by 9,400 people in 50 villages, including 16 living (3 of which are moribund) and one extinct language. [ 1 ] The 17 languages, ranked from northwest to southeast, are: [ 1 ] : 181
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Clark (2009) provides the following classification of the Central Vanuatu languages, divided into geographic areas. [1] Outlier (aberrant) languages identified by Clark (2009) are in italics . Clark's Central Vanuatu branch is wider in scope, [ clarification needed ] including not only the Shepherd–Efate languages, but also the Malakula and ...
Mele-Fila (Ifira-Mele) is a Polynesian language spoken in Mele and Ifira on the island of Efate in Vanuatu. In spite of their differences, Mele and Fila are two dialects of the same language and are mutually intelligible. French and English are also fairly common among the residents of Efate. [2]
It is the only language that can be understood and spoken by the majority of Vanuatu's population as a second language. In addition 113 indigenous languages are still actively spoken in Vanuatu. [1] The density of languages per capita is the highest of any nation in the world, with an average of 2,000 speakers per language.
Lenakel is an Austronesian language of southern Vanuatu. Its closest relatives are the other four Tanna languages spoken on the island of Tanna. It is particularly closely related to the Whitesands language and North Tanna, the two languages closest in geographic space to the Lenakel language area.
The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage (rather than family) of Oceanic languages spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by John Lynch in 1995 and supported by later studies. It appears to be a linkage rather than a language family with a clearly defined internal nested structure.