Vanuatu talk · Languages in Vanuatu
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Languages in Vanuatu
Languages in Vanuatu
There are three official languages: English, French and Bislama. Bislama is a pidgin language – and now a creole in urban areas – which essentially combines a typically Melanesian grammar with a mostly English vocabulary. It is the only language that can be understood and spoken by the whole population of Vanuatu, generally as a second language.
It is a mixture of phonetic English woven in a loose French sentence structure spoken with ‘local sound' producing some comical outcomes e.g., ladies brassieres or bathing top is called "Basket blong titi"; no offense intended. An excellent Bislama dictionary is available from good book shops: 'A New Bislama Dictionary,' by the late Terry Crowley. Some common Bislama words/phrases include:
Me / you - mi / yu
Him / her / it (neither masculine nor feminine)
this here - hem/ hemia
Us /we / all of us - mifala / mifala evriwan
You / you (plural) - yu / yufala
I do not know/understand - mi no save
See you later / ta ta - Lukim yu/ tata
I am going now - ale (French derivation of allez) mi go
One/ two / three - wan / tu / tri
How much (is that) - hamas (long hem)
Plenty or many - plenti
Filled to capacity / overfilled - fulap / fulap tumas (too much)
Day / evening / night - dei / sava (literally supper) / naet
Hot / cold - hot / kol
What / what is that - wanem / wanem ia (literally wanem here?)
Why / why did you - frowanem (for why?)
Please / thank you / sorry (very sorry) - plis / tangkyu / sori (sori tumas) - sorry too much
Do you know - yu save (pronounced savee)
In addition, 113 indigenous languages are still actively spoken in Vanuatu. The density of languages per capita is the highest of any nation in the world, with an average of only 2000 speakers per language. All of these vernacular languages belong to the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
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Vanuatu Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.