Languages in Vanuatu

Although a very small country, Vanuatu comes out on top when it comes to the number of languages that exist in this small nation considering its population of 243,000. The country is host to over a hundred different languages where each language has averages of about 2,000 speakers only.  Currently, all the indigenous languages spoken in Vanuatu are intact and not in any way endangered of being extinct.

Dspite the myriad of languages one may find in this little known country until it was featured in the show international hit show, “Survivor,” Vanuatu, surprisingly, have English and French as two of the three official languages, the other being Bislama.

English and French, understandably, got ingrained in Vanuatu because the British and French jointly occupied this 12,189 square kilometer territory back in the 1900s. Because of the undeniable contributions of those two major European powers to modern Vanuatu, and also the ties it has still with modern Britain and France, Vanuatu find it advantageous to have the English and French languages as official languages.

Bislama, the third official language, is a Creole language that sprung out from the English language. Bislama language is the bridging language for all citizens of Vanuatu as it is the second language most people can resort to in case two people of Vanuatu needs to converse to each other if they happen to belong from different ethnicity. This Creole language is somewhat similar to Tok Pisin, another Creole language which is spoken in Papua New Guinea.