Languages of the Solomon Islands archipelago | |
---|---|
Official | English |
Indigenous | Several languages |
Vernacular | Pijin, Solomon Islands English |
Keyboard layout |
Between 60 and 70 languages are spoken in the Solomon Islands archipelago [1] which covers a broader area than the nation state of Solomon Islands, [2] and includes the island of Bougainville, which is an autonomous province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The lingua franca of the archipelago is Pijin, and the official language in both countries is English.
Most of the languages in the Solomon Islands archipelago are Austronesian languages.
The Central Solomon languages such as Bilua, Lavukaleve, Savosavo and Touo constitute an independent family within the Papuan languages. [3]
Two other language families are represented on Bougainville, which forms part of the nation of Papua New Guinea but is geographically part of the archipelago.
The status of the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages were once thought to be non-Austronesian, but further research found them to be divergent Austronesian languages. [4] The neighbouring languages of Vanikoro are also heavily relexified Austronesian languages. [5]
An indigenous sign language, Rennellese Sign Language, has gone extinct.
Italics indicate that a language is extinct.
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship.
The East Papuan languages is a defunct proposal for a family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. There is no evidence that these languages are related to each other, and the Santa Cruz languages are no longer recognized as Papuan.
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Tolai languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic.
Donald Laycock (1936–1988) was an Australian linguist and anthropologist. He is best remembered for his work on the languages of Papua New Guinea.
The Mussau-Emira language is spoken on the islands of Mussau and Emirau in the St Matthias Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago.
The culture of the Solomon Islands reflects the extent of the differentiation and diversity among the groups living within the Solomon Islands archipelago, which lies within Melanesia in the Pacific Ocean, with the peoples distinguished by island, language, topography, and geography. The cultural area includes the nation state of Solomon Islands and the Bougainville Island, which is a part of Papua New Guinea.
The Central Solomon languages are the four Papuan languages spoken in the state of Solomon Islands.
Kazukuru is an extinct language that was once spoken in New Georgia, Solomon Islands. The Dororo and Guliguli languages were transcriptional variants, dialects, or closely related. The speakers of Kazukuru gradually merged with the Roviana people from the sixteenth century onward and adopted Roviana as their language. Kazukuru was last recorded in the early twentieth century when its speakers were in the last stages of language shift. Today, Kazukuru is the name of a clan in the Roviana people group.
The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages are a branch of the Oceanic languages comprising the languages of the Santa Cruz Islands and Reef Islands:
The Alor–Pantar languages are a family of clearly related Papuan languages spoken on islands of the Alor archipelago near Timor in southern Indonesia. They may be most closely related to the Papuan languages of eastern Timor, but this is not yet clear. A more distant relationship with the Trans–New Guinea languages of the Bomberai peninsula of Western New Guinea has been proposed based on pronominal evidence, but though often cited has never been firmly established.
The Temotu languages, named after Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, are a branch of Oceanic languages proposed in Ross & Næss (2007) to unify the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages with Utupua and Vanikoro, each a group of three related languages.
The Touo language, also known as Baniata (Mbaniata) or Lokuru, is spoken over the southern part of Rendova Island, located in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.
Bilua is the most populous Papuan language spoken in the Solomon Islands. It is a Central Solomon language spoken by about 9,000 people on the island of Vella Lavella. It is one of the four Papuan non-Austronesian languages spoken in the Solomon Islands.
The family of Northwest Solomonic languages is a branch of the Oceanic languages. It includes the Austronesian languages of Bougainville and Buka in Papua New Guinea, and of Choiseul, New Georgia, and Santa Isabel in Solomon Islands.
Teanu is the main language spoken on the island of Vanikoro, in the easternmost province of the Solomon Islands.
Nuguria (Nukuria) is a Polynesian language, spoken by approximately 550 people on Nuguria in the eastern islands of Papua New Guinea. The language was taught in primary schools in Nuguria and was used for daily communications between adults and children. Nuguria is one of the eighteen small islands to the east of Papua New Guinea, which are known as the Polynesian Outliers. The Nukuria language has been concluded to be closely related to other nearby languages such as Nukumanu, Takuu, Nukuoro, and Luangiua. Research on the Nuguria Atoll and the language itself is scarce; past research demonstrated that this language was at risk of potential endangerment. The language was only then classified as at risk of endangerment because it was still used between generations and was passed on to the children. However, recent research indicates that Nukuria is now most likely an extinct language.
Lawunuia is an Austronesian language spoken along the Piva river in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. It is closely related to Banoni; together, Lawununia and Banoni make up one of the five primary branches of Northwest Solomonic, a major subgroup of the Oceanic languages.
Darrell T. Tryon was a New Zealand-born linguist, academic, and specialist in Austronesian languages. Specifically, Tryon specialised in the study of the languages of the Pacific Islands, particularly Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the French-speaking Pacific.
Tom Dutton was an Australian linguist specialising in Papuan languages and other languages of Papua New Guinea.
Proto-Temotu is the reconstructed ancestor of the Temotu languages of Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. It belongs to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian languages.