Page 136 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

The main language used by the people of Fiji is English. Nevertheless, in parliament,
Fijian and Hindi are also spoken. Fijian is a language in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup
of the Austronesian language family. Fijian has a number of dialects, the most commonly
used one being Bau, which is used throughout the country with the exception of Rotuma
(Gall and Hobby, 2007).

Language Distribution Map in Fiji 1
Fiji has ten languages. All of them are used as a means of communication by the people
of Fiji.
Of these ten languages, there are eight languages which are part of the Austronesian
language family. So we can say that 80% of the languages in Fiji are Austronesian languages.
The map shows that the languages in Fiji belong to two major language families, East
Fijian-Polynesian and West Fijian-Rotuman.
The majority of Fijians speak East Fijian-Polynesian languages.

Graph 1: Language Transmission Scale in Fiji
0 International
6 1 National
5 2 Provincial
3 Widespread Communication
4 4 Education
3 5 Developing
6.a Strong
2 6.b Threatened
1 7 Shifting
8.a Dying
0 8.b Nearly Extinct
1 2 3 4 5 6a 6b 7 8a 8b 9 10 9 Fading
10 Extinct

As shown in the graph, in Fiji there are three languages with institutional status, one
developing language, five strong languages, and one in in a weak state. Among all the
countries in the Melanesian region, Fiji’s languages are in the best state. No language has
become extinct in Fiji and there is only one threatened language, Rotuman [rtm], a non-
Austronesian language, status 6b on the scale (Lewis et al., 2015).

1 All of the maps in the language profile section of this chapter are used by permission, 2016 ©
SIL International Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 18th Edition, online version. Further redistribution
prohibited without permission.

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