Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oceania.
The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. They are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines, either directly, via the Mariana Islands, or both. They were notable for their distinctive geometric designs on dentate-stamped pottery, which closely resemble the pottery recovered from the Nagsabaran archaeological site in northern Luzon. The Lapita intermarried with the Papuan populations to various degrees, and are the direct ancestors of the Austronesian peoples of Polynesia, eastern Micronesia, and Island Melanesia.
The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the nation of Solomon Islands. They lie approximately 250 miles to the southeast of the Solomon Islands archipelago. The Santa Cruz Islands lie just north of the archipelago of Vanuatu, and are considered part of the Vanuatu rain forests ecoregion.
Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in an area stretching from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. Most speak one of the many languages of the Austronesian language family or one of the many unrelated families of Papuan languages. There are several creoles of the region, such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.
The over 200 Central–Eastern Oceanic languages form a branch of the Oceanic language family within the Austronesian languages.
Located in the central Pacific Ocean, Fiji's geography has made it both a destination and a crossroads for migrations for many centuries.
The Papuan Tip languages are a branch of the Western Oceanic languages consisting of 60 languages.
The Huon Gulf languages are Western Oceanic languages spoken primarily in Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. They may form a group of the North New Guinea languages, perhaps within the Ngero–Vitiaz branch of that family.
In linguistics, Melanesian is an obsolete term referring to the Austronesian languages of Melanesia: that is, the Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, or Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages apart from Polynesian and Micronesian. A typical classification of the Austronesian languages ca. 1970 would divide them into something like the following branches:
The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage 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.
Melanesian mythology refers to the folklore, myths, and religions of Melanesia, a region in Southwest Oceania that encompasses the archipelagos of New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. The various mythologies consist primarily of the traditions of oral literature in the different populations of Melanesia. More recent aspects include the cargo cults born in the 20th century during the Pacific War.
Proto-Oceanic is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages.
Utupua is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, located 66 km to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group, between Vanikoro and Santa Cruz proper. This island belongs administratively to the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands.
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 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.
Island Melanesia is a subregion of Melanesia in Oceania.
Bannoni, also known as Tsunari, is an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea. It has approximately 1,000 native speakers. The Banoni people refer to their language as Tsunari, but acknowledge the name Banoni and accept it as well. Tsunari technically translates to 'their truth'.
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.
