Languages of the Solomon Islands
| Languages of the Solomon Islands (archipelago) | |
|---|---|
 Language families of the Solomon Islands archipelago Red: North Bougainville Blue: South Bougainville Green: Central Solomons Grey: Austronesian | |
| Official | English |
| Indigenous | Several languages |
| Vernacular | Pijin, Solomon Islands English |
| Keyboard layout | |
Over 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 Solomon Islands proper is Pijin (whereas the lingua franca of Bougainville is Tok Pisin) and the official language in both countries is English.
Language families
- Austronesian languages
Most of the languages in the Solomon Islands archipelago are Austronesian languages, more precisely Oceanic. They belong to different language subgroups within the Oceanic family:
- Northwest Solomonic languages
- Southeast Solomonic languages
- Temotu languages
- Polynesian outliers (all of which belong to the Nuclear Polynesian group)
The Reefs – Santa Cruz languages were once thought to be non-Austronesian, but further research found them to be divergent Austronesian languages.[3] The neighbouring languages of Vanikoro are also heavily relexified Austronesian languages.[4] Both RSC and Vanikoro-Utupua languages are now subsumed under the Temotu subgroup of Oceanic.
An indigenous sign language, Rennellese Sign Language, has gone extinct.
- Non-Austronesian languages
Besides Austronesian languages, the Central Solomon languages such as Bilua, Lavukaleve (further information in the Lavukaleve Spanish article), Savosavo and Touo constitute an independent family within the Papuan languages.[5]
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.
Languages of the Solomon Islands archipelago
The following table lists 72 indigenous languages, including 66 from the Oceanic family, 4 from a “Papuan” family (Central Solomonic), as well as one Creole and one sign language.
Italics indicate that a language is extinct.
Footnotes
- ^ Tryon & Hackman (1983).
- ^ Ples Blong Iumi: Solomon Islands the Past Four Thousand Years, Hugh Laracy (ed.), University of the South Pacific, 1989, ISBN 982-02-0027-X
- ^ Ross & Næss (2007).
- ^ François (2009)
- ^ Obata (2003:1)
Sources
- François, Alexandre (2009), "The languages of Vanikoro: Three lexicons and one grammar" (PDF), in Evans, Bethwyn (ed.), Discovering history through language: Papers in honour of Malcolm Ross, Pacific Linguistics 605, Canberra: Australian National University, pp. 103–126
- Obata, Kazuko (2003). A Grammar of Bilua: a Papuan language of the Solomon Islands (PDF). Pacific Linguistics 540. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. The Australian National University. doi:10.15144/PL-540. hdl:1885/146708. ISBN 0-85883-531-2.
- Ross, Malcolm; Næss, Åshild (2007). "An Oceanic origin for Äiwoo, the language of the Reef Islands?". Oceanic Linguistics. 46 (2): 456–498. doi:10.1353/ol.2008.0003. hdl:1885/20053.
- Tryon, Darrell T.; Hackman, Bryan D. (1983). Solomon Islands languages: an internal classification. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/PL-C72.
- Data set derived from Tryon & Hackman (1983): Greenhill, Simon, & Robert Forkel. (2019). lexibank/tryonsolomon: Solomon Islands Languages (Version v3.0). Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.3535809
