What languages are spoken in Vanuatu?

Ethnologue lists 113 languages for Vanuatu, two extinct: Vanuatu

Vanuatu has the highest language density of any country on the planet: one language per 2,000 people.

When last I checked, Vanuatu was also the last frontier for a large number of undocumented or underdocumented languages. Ethnologue is compiled by SIL International, which coordinates missionary linguists. The SIL has done a lot of work in Papua New Guinea, and relatively few academic linguists have (although it is becoming a default destination for Australian linguists, now that they’ve run out of Aboriginal languages to document). But SIL missionaries have not been welcome in Vanuatu.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *