Languages of Oceania

The branches of the Oceanic languages

  Admiralties and Yapese

  St Matthias

  Western Oceanic

  Temotu

  Southeast Solomons

  Southern Oceanic

  Micronesian

  Fijian–Polynesian

Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups:

• The large Austronesian language family, with such languages as Malay (Indonesian), Tagalog (Filipino), and Polynesian languages such as Maori and Hawaiian
• The various Aboriginal Australian language families, including the large Pama–Nyungan family
• The various Papuan language families of New Guinea and neighbouring islands, including the large Trans–New Guinea family

Contact between Austronesian and Papuan resulted in several instances in mixed languages such as Maisin.

Colonial languages include English in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and many other territories; French in New Caledonia, in Vanuatu, in Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia, Japanese in the Bonin Islands; Spanish on Easter Island, Galápagos Islands and Juan Fernández Islands; and Portuguese in East Timor.

There are also creoles formed from the interaction of Malay or the colonial languages with indigenous languages, such as Tok Pisin, Bislama, Pijin, various Malay trade and creole languages, Hawaiian Pidgin, Norfuk, and Pitkern.

Finally, immigrants brought their own languages, such as Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese, Greek and others in Australia, or Fiji Hindi in Fiji.

See also

• Culture of Oceania
• Languages of Africa
• Languages of Asia

External links

• Media related to Languages of Oceania at Wikimedia Commons