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There are an estimated 2 million ethnic Polynesians and many of partial Polynesian descent worldwide, the majority of whom live in Polynesia, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. [40] The Polynesian peoples are listed below in their distinctive ethnic and cultural groupings, with estimates of the larger groups provided: Polynesia:
Polynesian languages are all members of the family of Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the Austronesian language family. Polynesian languages show a considerable degree of similarity. The vowels are generally the same—/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, pronounced as in Italian, Spanish, and German—and the consonants are always followed by a vowel.
Melanesia is the great arc of islands located north and east of Australia and south of the Equator. The name derives the Greek words melas ('black') and nēsos ('island') for the predominantly dark-skinned peoples of New Guinea island, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides), New Caledonia, and Fiji.
Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. The development of Polynesian culture is typically divided into four different historical eras:
Polynesian is the adjectival form of Polynesia. It may refer to: Polynesians, an ethnic group; Polynesian culture, the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia; Polynesian mythology, the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia; Polynesian languages, a language family spoken in geographical Polynesia and on a patchwork of outliers
Pacific Islanders may be considered Oceanian Americans, but this group may include Australians and New Zealander-origin people, who can be of non-Pacific Islander ethnicity. Many Pacific Islander Americans are mixed with other races, especially Europeans and Asians, due to Pacific Islanders being a small population in several communities across ...
The numbers may also include the modern population in these islands of mixed Polynesian and French ancestry (French: demis). Indigenous Tahitians are one of the largest Polynesian ethnic groups , behind the Māori , Samoans and Hawaiians .
Oceania is generally considered the least decolonized region in the world. In his 1993 book France and the South Pacific since 1940, Robert Aldrich commented: . With the ending of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands became a 'commonwealth' of the United States, and the new republics of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia signed ...