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Central Vanuatu languages

subgroup of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 31, 2025
Entity authorityQ5061988
Source-derived summary

The Central Vanuatu languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in central Vanuatu.

Languages

Clark (2009)

Clark (2009) provides the following classification of the Central Vanuatu languages, divided into geographic areas. Outlier (aberrant) languages identified by Clark (2009) are in italics. Clark's Central Vanuatu branch is wider in scope, including not only the Shepherd–Efate languages, but also the Malakula and Ambrym–Paama–Epi languages.

François et al. (2015)

The following list of 19 Central Vanuatu languages (excluding the Malakula languages) is from François et al. (2015:18–21).

Additionally, the extinct Sowa language was formerly spoken in central Vanuatu.

References

François, Alexandre; Franjieh, Michael; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Schnell, Stefan (2015), "The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu", in François, Alexandre; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Franjieh, Michael; Schnell, Stefan (eds.), The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity, Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access, pp. 1–21, ISBN 9781922185235, archived from the original (PDF) on 25 August 2015.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Central Vanuatu languages” is subgroup of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Central, Vanuatu and languages, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009, 2015—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Central, Vanuatu and languages is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “subgroup of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5061988. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2015.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Central Vanuatu languages” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.