Language of Vanuatu

The official languages of Vanuatu are Bislama, English and French. English is widely spoken and most people speak Bislama.

Business communication is conducted in English, French or Bislama. For the population of 150,000, Vanuatu has about 110 languages, which is the world's highest concentration of languages. However, there are on an average around 2000 speakers for each language.

The reason behind so many languages was that most villages had very limited contact with each other and therefore developed their own languages. The contact with the West due to trade led to the communication amongst villages. As a result, a pidgin developed throughout much of Melanesia (from Papua New Guinea through The Solomon Islands to Vanuatu), which is known as Bislama, Vanuatu's variant.

Melanesian Pidgin came into existence in the 19th century, when Europeans harvested sandalwood and sea cucumbers (named ‘Bicho Do Mar’ in Portuguese, became ‘Bêche-de-mer’ in French and then Bislama) for trade with China. In the late 1800's, Melanesians were recruited as laborers for sugarcane plantations in Queensland. Laborers with their own village languages found it difficult to communicate with their English-speaking supervisors and thus developed a language out of necessity. The laborers returning back home brought their new language back to Vanuatu.

Bislama is a potpourri of English, French, and Melanesian words set to a Melanesian grammatical arrangement. Words tend to represent general concepts, rather than specific things. For example, the noun "han" means "upper extremity", as in "arm" (anywhere from fingertip to shoulder), "sleeve", "tree branch", etc. The verb "harem" means "sense", as in "hear", "feel", "smell", or "taste". The concepts expressed in conversation can be a bit vague and are usually expressed in several different ways, with examples given and gestures made. However, misunderstandings are not uncommon. The spelling is phonetic and fluid, especially since several consonant sounds are considered equivalent, for example "k" and "g", or "b" and "p".

By: Shuchita Bist     

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