The Language Situation in Vanuatu Terry Crowley Published Online: 26 Mar 2010

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Terry Crowley Department of General and Applied Linguistics, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand

One of thesmallest nations, Vanuatu isalsolinguistically the most diverse. In addition to itsEnglish-lexifier pidgin nationallanguage, English and Frenchare official languages.While local languages are valued symbols of identity,little attempt has beenmade to promote functionalliteracy in locallanguages, while English and French havebeen promoted by education.Although Bislamais the national spoken language, littleattention has been paid to developing itswritten form. It hasbeen difficult to speakof ‘languageplanning’ regarding local languages, the approach having beenone of maximum non-involvement, though some changes are now envisaged.

Introduction Vanuatuis a politicallyindependent republic locatedin the south-western Pacificbetween Fiji, SolomonIslands and New Caledonia,about 1700 km north-eastof Brisbane in Australia(Figure 1).Formerly known as the New Hebrides, Vanuatugained itsindependence fromjoint Anglo-French colonial controlin 1980.This political ‘ condominium’was not established until 1906, whichpossibly makes Vanuatu the lastpart of the pre-colonialworld to have ever been colonised by a European power. Ni-Vanuatu1 (asthe people ofVanuatu are known) andpeople fromthe neighbouring islandgroups of Fiji, New Caledonia,Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea,Irian Jaya (in the easternpart of Indonesia) and Torres Strait (between the Queensland mainlandand Papua New Guinea) arenormally described as Melanesians.This name derives fromthe physicalappearance of the people who aredarker in complexionthan their Polynesian,Micronesian and South-east Asian neighbours. The populationof Vanuatu is currently estimatedto be about195,000, which is fewer thanwhat in manycountries would be regarded asa regionalcity of very moderatesize. This population is spread throughout a largenumber ofislands of varyingsize in aY-shapedarchipelago that spreads over a north-southdistance ofapproximately 850 km (Figure 2).Inter-island travel is often difficult, dependent onirregular (and often uncomfortable)shipping, orrelatively expensive

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 plane flights which only service a restricted range of locations. While travelbetween islandscan be difficult, travelwithin islands can sometimesalso be awkward.Only the largestand most populated islandsof Espiritu Santo,Malakula, Efate and Tanna have road networks of anyextent. These roads arefor the mostpart fairly rough,and they areeasily damaged (or even made impassible) by badweather. Only onEfateis there aroadthat links allpopulated centreson the island,though ittoo can be impassiblein badweather. On allother islands,roads typically extend only tothoseplaces where constructionis least

The Language Situation in Vanuatu 48 Current Issues in Language Planning

Figure 1 Location of Vanuatu in the southwestern Pacific

disfavouredby topographyor rainfall,and people onsomeislands frequently have to walk some distance to reach the nearest road. Telecommunicationshave improved considerably since independence (though itis only possible tosaythatbecause telecommunicationswere particu-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 larlybasic before 1980).There isnowa direct-dialtelephone network(powered by solarcells in the outerislands where there isoften noelectricity supply) linking allislands (as well aslinking Vanuatuto the outsideworld). However, telephone callsare quite expensive given mostlocal people’ s incomes,and it isnot uncommonfor community telephones tohave to be disconnecteddue to non-payment of bills in the outerislands where people arelimited in their income-generating capacities. While in somerural areas there isa fairly dense coverageof privatetelephone connections,many villages have no telephones atall. People in somevillages are able tomake do with the lesssatisfactory teleradio alternative, which canbe patchedinto the telephone network.The soundquality with this system is much The Language Situation in Vanuatu 49 Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

Figure 2 Islands of Vanuatu 50 Current Issues in Language Planning

worseand there isno privacy, so anybodywho is listening onthe networkcan eavesdropon aconversation.Of course,many villages have neither atelephone nora teleradio,which means that long distancecommunication depends ona willingness –orability– totravel(often onfoot) to avillage where there issome meansof telecommunication. Under suchcircumstances, something as simple as makinga phone callcan sometimestake people twoor three daysof their time. There areonly twourban centresof anysize in Vanuatu,the capitalPort Vila onthe centralisland of Efate(with apopulationof approximately35,000) and Luganville onthe northernisland of Espiritu Santo (with anapproximatepopu- lationof 10,000). The Melanesian populationlives overwhelmingly in smallrural villagesfollowing largely subsistencelifestyles, withonly about15% of Ni-Vanuatu living in either ofthe towns.The grossdomestic product per capita isapproximately $US1000 (Siegel, 1996a:98), which reflects the relativelack of exploitable resourcesin the country,so there isa high dependence onexternal aid.The majorexport commodities produced in Vanuatuare copra, cocoa, beef, coffee andkava, 2 while tourism(mostly from Australia and New Zealand)and a tax-exemptfinance centre provide additionalemployment foreducated local people, as well as opportunities for investment.

The Language Profile of Vanuatu

National/official languages Vanuatuis linguistically the world’s mostdiverse nationin termsof the number ofactivelyspoken indigenous languagesper headof population, with at least80 locallanguages spoken by anaverage of only about2500 speakers each. 3 Thisextreme linguistic– andaccompanying cultural – diversityis acknowledged in the preamble to the constitution of Vanuatu, which states: We the people of Vanuatu Proud of our struggle for freedom Determined to safeguard the achievement of this struggle Cherishing our ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity Hereby proclaimthe establishmentof the united andfree Republic of Vanuatu. The constitutiondeclares that Bislama is the ‘nationallanguage’ , while Bislama, English andFrench areall declared to be ‘officiallanguages’ . In addition,the ‘principal languages of education’ are declared to be English and French:

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 The nationallanguage ofthe Republic isBislama. The officiallanguages are Bislama,English andFrench. The principal languagesof education are English and French. (The Constitution of Vanuatu, Article 3:1.) In additionto the high statusaccorded to these three lingua francas,there isalso a paragraphwhich protects the indigenous vernaculars,and which even provides forthe possible elevationof anyone ofthese languagesto the statusof ‘national language’ at some time in the future if the circumstances warrant. 4 There isactually a slightdifference in the wordingof the English andFrench versionsof the constitutionwith regard to the statusof these languages.Article 3:1 in the French version reads as follows: The Language Situation in Vanuatu 51

Lalangue véhiculaire nationalede laRé publique estle bichelamar.Les langues officielles sontl’ anglais, le bichelamar,le français. Les langues principales de l’é ducation sont l’anglais et le français. Langue véhiculaire nationale translatesas ‘nationallingua franca’, notas ‘national language’as itappears in the English versionof the constitution.On the basisof the French wording,it is arguable, therefore, thatthe originalframers of the constitutionhad in mind the ideathat Bislama would effectively function asthe officialspoken language atthe nationallevel, while English andFrench would function as the official written languages. Charpentier (1999)comments that he wasone ofthose originally involved in the framingof this aspect of the constitution,claiming that it was decided atthe timethat in the caseof anydispute between the English andFrench versionsof the constitution,the French versionwould prevail. However, this provision was notwritten into the constitutionitself andno minute notingsuch a provisioncan nowbe located,so thisargument presumably nolonger hasany legal standing. The practicesince independence hascertainly been tobaseconstitutional argu- mentson the basisof the English document,since the vastmajority of trained lawyersin the countryare English-educated. In fact,the ombudsman’s reportto parliamenton the observanceof multilingualism in 1996even makesthe specific recommendationthat ‘ the Attorney-Generalundertake tohave the French versionof the Constitutionrevised sothat it faithfully reflects the English version’(Office ofthe Ombudsman,1996), which implies thatthe English version is now seen as prevailing over the French version. The constitutionalso includes certainsafeguards to ensure the preservationof multilingualismin the countryby clearlystating that citizens have a rightto obtainthe servicesof the governmentin whichever ofthese three languagesthey use (Article 62:1).Citizens are guaranteed by Article62:2 that any complaints aboutbreaches of the preceding articlecan be heardby the ombudsman.The ombudsman,furthermore, is required tosubmitan annualreport to parliament concerning the observanceof multilingualismin the country,and any steps needed to ensure its continuance (Article 62:3). Although the constitutionprovides strong safeguards for the statusof Bislama,English andFrench, there issome provision for change in thisarea. I havealready referred tothe possibilitythat one ofthe locallanguages could be promotedas a (presumably co-equal) nationallanguage alongsideBislama under Article3:2. Since independence there havebeen nosuggestions at all that anyof the locallanguages should be consideredas anationallanguage, afact Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 whichis hardly surprising given thatthe largestlocal language in the country reachesless than 6% ofthe totalpopulation. There wassome brief debate in the immediaterun-up toindependence concerning the possibilityof adopting Nakanamanga(of northernEfate and parts of the Shepherd Islands)as anational language, though the limited geographicalspread of thislanguage ensured that such a suggestion could not be too seriously considered. There isyet anotherarticle in the constitutionwhich allowsfor the statusof any one (or two, or all three) of these three official languages to be altered: Abill foran amendmentof a provisionof the Constitutionregarding the statusof Bislama,English andFrench ...passedby Parliamentunder Arti- 52 Current Issues in Language Planning

cle 83shall not come into effect unless ithas been supported in anational referendum. (Article 84)

Todatethere hasnot been anyserious proposal made by Ni-Vanuatu forany suchchanges to be considered,though one occasionallyhears casual suggestions thatmaintaining French alongsideEnglish asanofficiallanguage iswasteful for sucha smallcountry, and that the countrywould be better off withjust English as asingle metropolitanlanguage. Equally,however, one hearswords of support forthe maintenanceof French asanofficiallanguage alongsideEnglish because ofthe unique perspective in the Pacificthat this gives Vanuatu,linking itmore closelyto developments in francophonepolities such as neighbouring New Caledonia, as well as to more distant Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia. By thisset of constitutionalprovisions, Vanuatu has established itself asa nationthat is unique in the Pacificin anumber ofsignificant respects. It is firstly the only countryin the region thatgives bothEnglish and French equal constitutionalstatus. In allother newly independent orself-governing politiesin the Pacific,only one of these twolanguages is given suchrecognition. Vanuatu, therefore, represents the only pointat which the anglophone andfrancophone worlds intersect in the Pacific. Secondly, if we assumethat a ‘national’language ishigher in standingthan an ‘official’language, then Vanuatuis the only PacificIsland nation where a non-metropolitanlanguage (in thiscase, Bislama) is given higher constitutional statusthan a formercolonial language. While in somepolities there areconstitu- tionalguarantees for the equal statusof a locallanguage withthe formercolonial language, there isusually someadditional constitutional rider which states– as inthe caseof the Kiribati 5 constitution– that‘ in the event ofanyinconsistency between the twotexts [of the constitution],this English textshall prevail’ . The intentionthat is implicit in suchprovisions is presumably thatEnglish ultimately shouldbe viewed ashavinghigher constitutionalstatus than the locallanguage. Finally, Vanuatuis the only countryin the Pacific– indeed in the world– in whicha European-lexifier pidgin language hasbeen declaredto be anational language. Bislama,along with Tok Pisin in PapuaNew Guinea andPijin in Solo- monIslands,constitute mutually intelligible varietiesof a single language which wecanrefer togenerically asMelanesian Pidgin. However,in these twoother countriesthere isno constitutional statement about what is the national language. The factthat both constitutions were promulgatedat independence exclusively in English canbe takenas implying thatthis was tobe regardedas the

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 de facto national language in the two cases. Asthe nationallanguage, Bislamafunctions as morethan just the majorlingua francawithin Vanuatu, as italso carries some of the emblematicfunctions that wetypicallyassociate with a nationallanguage. Vanuatu’s coinageis inscribed in Bislamaonly ( Ripablikblong Vanuatu ‘Republic ofVanuatu’), while the mottoon the nationalcoat of arms is given inBislama( LongGod yumi stanap ‘In God we stand’). Finally, the wordsof the nationalanthem are sung exclusively in Bislama:

Yumi, yumi, yumi i glad blong talem se Yumi, yumi, yumi i man blong Vanuatu. 6 The Language Situation in Vanuatu 53

By wayofcontrast,the coinagein bothPapua New Guinea andSolomon Islands isinscribed only inEnglish,and the nationalanthems of both countries are also sung only in English. Bislamais a relativelynew language, havingevolved initiallyas a resultof multilingual contactin campsof recruited labourersin the islandsof southern Vanuatuaround the mid-1800swhen seaslugs and sandalwood were processed forsale to China by aworkforce recruited froma varietyof different speech communities(Crowley, 1990a: 71– 100). In thissituation where Ni-Vanuatu labourershad limited access to the English of their European overseers,an English-lexifier pidgin rapidly emerged andbecame the lingua francaof these labourcamps. The seaslugs were often calledby their French name biche de mer, andthe pidgin thatgrew up in the contextof the tradein thiscommodity came to be referred toas biche de mer English.This was rapidly abbreviatedto simply bichelamar asa language name(which became Beach-la-Marto English-speakers), eventually yielding modern Bislama. In the secondhalf ofthe 19thcentury, tensof thousands of Ni-Vanuatu were recruited –andsome were forced– towork on plantationsfurther afield, mostly in Queensland, withsome also going toFiji. The 19th-centuryantecedent of modernBislama rapidly became the lingua francaof these overseasplantations. Many people signed up forcontracts of three years’duration and then returned homehaving acquired a knowledge ofthislanguage. Many ofthosewho stayed formore than the minimum three yearswere repatriatedwith the end ofthe prac- ticeof recruiting Melanesiansas plantationlabourers just after Australia’ s feder- ationin 1901,which was just before the establishmentof the Anglo-French condominium in Vanuatu in 1906. After thistime, people began forthe firsttime to movein significantnumbers toa varietyof locations as plantationlabourers within Vanuatu. People fromthe BanksIslands were recruited towork on plantations in the areasof southeastern EspirituSanto, Aore and Malo, while people fromEspiritu Santo, Ambae, Maewo,Pentecost, Malakula, Ambrym, Paama and the Shepherd Islandswere recruited toworkon the plantationsof northernEfate (Crowley, 1990a: 100– 107). Thislarge-scale recruitment of labourresulted inthe continuationof the spread ofBislama as aplantationlingua francato manyparts of the countrywhere ithad previously been unknown or little known. During the early1940s, in partsof Vanuatu– particularlythe islandof Efate andthe south-easternpart of Espiritu Santo – huge Americanmilitary bases were establishedfrom which Japanese positionsin the SolomonIslands were attacked.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 There wasnever anyJapanese occupationof anyislands in Vanuatu,nor was there anysignificant bombing in ruralareas, though the Americanmilitary occu- pationdid have the effect offurther spreading Bislamaas alingua franca,as large numbers ofyoung men were recruited frommany different partsof Vanuatuto workas manual labourers in the constructionof roadsand airfields (Lindstrom and Gwero, 1998). 7 Bislamais now used practicallythroughout the countryas a lingua franca. There areparts of Vanuatuwhere young children donotspeak the language, notablyon islandssuch as Erromango or Aneityum where justa single vernacu- laris spoken andthere arefew outsiders,and where relativelyfew children have the opportunityto travel to town.Even onsuchislands, however, children inevi- 54 Current Issues in Language Planning

tablylearn Bislama as they get older,with few people overthe age often being unable tospeak it.It is not uncommon for older (and even middle-aged) women in ruralareas to have a somewhatrestricted active command of the language, though they usually haveat least a reasonablepassive command. At the present, the only partsof the countrywhere there aresignificant numbers ofadults with little(or no) familiaritywith Bislama are parts of the interiorof EspirituSanto and Malakula,but even in suchisolated communities it is almost certain that some individuals will have a reasonable proficiency in the language.

Minority languages In the Vanuatucontext, it makes little sense tomakeany distinction between ‘major’and ‘ lesser’minority languages, as isoften madein countriessuch as the Philippines (Gonzalez,1998: 487) orMozambique (Lopes, 1998:441– 9). There isa very realsense in which all of the 80actively spoken indigenous languages shouldbe regardedas a‘minority’language in thatno single language isspoken by morethan 6% of the totalpopulation of the country.The average-sized language accountsfor no more than 1.25% of the totalpopulation. Of course, somelanguages have more speakers than others, though only three languages havemore than 9000 speakers. As manyas 37ofthese languageshave fewer than 1000speakers each, so clearlythe largestnumber oflanguagesfall intothis cate- goryof very smalllanguage communities.A breakdownof the number of languagesfor each population range isset out in Table 1.Figure 3showsthe location of those languages that have over 5000 speakers. All ofthese indigenous languagesof Vanuatu are ultimately related to each otheras members of the approximately500-strong Oceanic subgroup of languages,which extends from Easter Island in the east,New Zealandin the south,Hawaii in the north,and parts of Irian Jaya in the west.These languagesin turnbelong tothe considerablylarger Austronesian language family,which extendsfurther westwardsinto Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. This language family alsoincludes the indigenous languagesof Taiwan as well asthe Malagasy language of Madagascar. Within Vanuatu,the languagesof the islandsof Aneityum, Tannaand

Table 1 Vernaculars according to population size 0–999 37 languages 1,000–1,999 16 languages

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 2,000–2,999 6 languages 3,000–3,999 5 languages 4,000–4,999 4 languages 5,000–5,999 3 languages 6,000–6,999 3 languages 7,000–7,999 2 languages 8,000–8,999 1 language 9,000–10,000 2 languages 10,000+ 1 language The Language Situation in Vanuatu 55 Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

Figure 3 Largest vernaculars of Vanuatu 56 Current Issues in Language Planning

Erromangoin the southernprovince ofTafea are rather distinct from the languagesof the restof the country,and specialists have suggested thatthese southernlanguages are likely tobe moreclosely related linguistically to those of neighbouring New Caledonia(Lynch, 1998:48).There arealso three languagesin Vanuatuthat are of Polynesian origin,namely thoseof Ifiraand Mele on,or immediatelyoffshore from, the islandof Efate,Emae in the Shepherd Islands, andAniwa and Futuna inthe south.These languagesreflect relativelyrecent ‘backmigrations’ from Polynesia in the east. 8 The remainderof the languagesof Vanuatuare also recognisably interrelated within a single linguistic subgroup, though they arenevertheless quite distinctlanguages in the sense thatthey areall mutually unintelligible. Itshould be pointed outthat the number of80languages cited above should at thisstage be regardedas tentative only. Other figures havebeen quotedin published sources,with perhaps the mostwidely quotedfigure being 105 languages(Tryon, 1976, 1979, 1981). However, numbers haveranged between 52 in Capell (1954:95– 110) to 109in Grimes(1996: 918– 28), 110 in Tryon(1972: 45), and113 in Tryon(1996a: 171). While suchdiscrepancies may be puzzling to non-specialists,several explanations can be offered forthis. Some ofthe higher numbers include moribund languageswith just a handful ofspeakers,whereas the figure thatI havecited excludes thoselanguages that are no longer actively spoken, even though there maybe ahandful ofelderly people whostill maintain anabilityto speak suchdying languagesif they arecalledupon. Wecouldthere- fore addto the totalof 80atleastan additionaldozen or solanguagesthat are almostextinct, as they caneach still claim a smallnumber ofresidualspeakers (andthis number mayturn out to be higher asadditionalinformation comes to hand). However,there areother explanations as well forthese discrepancies.The lowerearlier figure citedby Capell wasbasedon incomplete linguisticinformation,which was all that was availableat the time.Capell’ s (1954:102) reference to asingle language onAmbrym,for example, mustnow be increasedon the basis ofcurrentevidence toatleast five distinctlanguages. Charpentier’ s (1982)documentationof southernMalakula is far more detailed than that of Tryon(1976), andfor the samearea Charpentier recordedsix languages not noted at all by Tryon.However, there arestill parts of Vanuatuwhere the precise linguistic situ- ationhas not yet been fully documented,so thisfigure of80shouldbe reconsid- ered when moredetailed information comes to hand. In particular,the linguistic situationin manyparts Espiritu Santo has been only scantilydocumented, and Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 further surprisesmay await us there asmoreresearch is carried out, with possibly more languages needing to be recognised. Ofcourse,we alsoface the inevitable problem ofwhatconstitutes the difference between ‘dialects’of asingle language andseparate ‘ languages’. Since people fromthe villagesof northernEfate andsouthern Efate cannot understand eachother, we wouldbe justified in recognising twodistinct languages here. However,people fromvillages on the easterncoast of the islandbetween these twoareas appear to be understoodby people bothin the southernand northern partsof the island.This eastern area could therefore equally be takento represent anextensioneither ofthe northernlanguage orofthe southernlanguage. Alter- The Language Situation in Vanuatu 57

natively,perhaps, it could be calleda separatelanguage in itsown right (Clark, 1985). Such situationsare referred toby linguistsas ‘dialectchains’ , andthey result in sometimesarbitrary decisions being madeas to how many languages are involved.The situationon Tanna today is of the samenature (Lynch, 1978: 719–20) andthe scantyevidence thatwe havefrom some parts of EspirituSanto suggeststhat such phenomena maywell be widespreadthere aswell. Early (1994:31– 2) indicatesthat there isa similarsituation on partsof Epi, andit is possible thatthis kind ofphenomenon wasmore widespread there before massivedepopulation anddemographic realignment affected the distributionof languageson the islandin the 19thcentury, resulting in the extinctionof some intermediate varieties. While Ihaveindicated that there areat least 80 actively spoken vernacular languagesin Vanuatu,just about all of these languagesexhibit somedegree of dialectdiversity. Some languagesare in factextremely diverse,and even small geographicaldistances can involve some significant degree oflinguistic divergence. The islandof Paama,for example, isless than 10 km fromnorth to south, yet there isan immediatelyrecognisable north-south divide between dialects, andmore detailed study shows that there areeven regionaldifferences within these twoareas. We havenowhere nearenough informationeven toguess how manyrecognisably distinct dialects of allof these 80languages there mightbe, but the number would certainly run into the hundreds in total. Ofallof the published censusesto date, only in the censusof 1989has there been aquestionrelating to proficiency in locallanguages. The questionwas wordedin sucha wayastoelicit informationonly abouthow many people spoke ‘alocallanguage’ , withoutattempting to seek torecord which locallanguages were spoken by people in whichlocations (Crowley, 1994). The population figures foreach language thatare presented in thismonograph have been derived insteadby estimatingwhere language boundariesare thoughtto lie and then totallingthe published populationsof villages within these areas(and then extrapolatingto the present onthe basisof the averageannual population increaseamong Ni-Vanuatu). Itshould be recognised,however, that there are several potential problems with these figures:

(1) Itis usually almostimpossible from the published censusresults to establish the number ofpeople residentin anareawho come from other language groups.The numbers ofsuchpeople areusually small,but there aresome

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 ruralareas where itis known that there aresignificant numbers ofplanta- tionlabourers who often comefrom other islands, e.g. ruralEfate, parts of coastalMalakula, and south-eastern Espiritu Santo, including Aoreand Malo. (2) Itis also usually almostimpossible to establish how many speakers of a particularlanguage areresident either in one ofthe twotowns, or in some otherlanguage areaas short-termvisitors, or astemporary,or even permanent,residents.There areprobably nolanguage communitiesin the entire countrywhere allspeakers live withintheir traditionalhome territories. However,some communities have larger proportions of their populations residentaway from ‘ home’than others. People fromoverpopulated small 58 Current Issues in Language Planning

islandssuch as Paamaand Tongoa, for example, areencountered in relatively largenumbers in townand on ruralplantations throughout the country. (3) Wevery often donot know for sure whichvillages lie withinwhich particular language area, especially in border areas. (4) Aswith any census, not all population centres were coveredequally well. People fromsome areas – typicallythose from fairly conservativeisolated rurallocations – havetraditionally been opposedto being included in the census,as they aresuspicious of the intentionsof the nationalgovernment in recordingthe kinds ofinformation that are sought. The number ofspeakersof languagesspoken in suchrural areas may therefore be underesti- mated.

Anothercensus was conducted in 1999, 9 though itwill be sometime before the resultsare analysed and published. Language questionswere dealtwith slightly differently in thislater census, with heads of householdsbeing askedwhat was the predominantlanguage used withinthe household.Individuals within each householdwere then askedseparately whether they couldspeak ‘alocal language’, Bislama,English, French, or‘ anyother language’ , andthere wasa separatequestion asking if people couldread and write in ‘alocallanguage’ , Bislama, English, French, or ‘any other language’. Censusenumerators in boththe 1989and 1999 censuses were notasked to recordlocal language names,merely totick‘ alocallanguage’ as ageneric cate- gory.There areactually several very goodreasons why they shouldnot have attemptedto record more detailed information without at least some special trainingin the elicitationof suchinformation. While itmay seem obviousthat all thatis needed isfor the censusto include aquestionwhich askseach person in the countryfor the straightforwardinformation ‘ Whatis your language?’ and ‘Whatlocal languages can you readand write?’ , itis not difficult toenvisage all sorts of problems with the answers that such questions would produce. Tobegin with,many languages in Vanuatusimply donothave names. There isonly asingle language spoken onPaama,and the language hasno name in the locallanguage. When speaking their language, the people ofPaama will gener- allyrefer toitas selusientenout Voum ‘the language ofPaama’, orsimply by the word lanus ‘vernacular’(ultimately fromEnglish language).Any responseto a questionasking what language isspoken by somebodyfrom Paama will neces- sarilyrepresent an ad hoc solution,and most people wouldend up sayingsome- thing like ‘I speak the vernacular’.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Acensusenumerator on nearby SoutheastAmbrym wouldface exactlythe sameproblem, asthere isno separate language namethere either. In linguistic terms,people fromPaama and Southeast Ambrym speak quite distinct languages,as people whohave not learned eachother’ s languagescannot under- standeach other. However, a linguisticallynaive census enumerator would have noway of knowing whether the separateresponses ‘ Ispeak language’from Paamaand Southeast Ambrym meanthat people speak the same‘ language’or different ‘languages’. Ona multilingual islandsuch as Malakula, a linguisticallynaive census enumeratorasking people fromthe north-easternpart of Malakula,including the islandsof Atchin,Wala, Rano and Uripiv, mightreceive avarietyof answers The Language Situation in Vanuatu 59

atdiffering levels ofspecificity orgenerality. Some people mightanswer that they speak the ‘language ofAtchin’or the ‘language ofWala’ , while othersmight saythat they speak the ‘language ofnorth-eastMalakula’ . Finally, if the enumer- atorhappens tobe recognisedas a non-Malakulan,the respondent mightanswer simply thathe orshe speaksa, or the, ‘ language of Malakula’. All of these answerswould be quite correct,though entering numbers ofspeakers on a censusreturn formfor ‘ Atchin’, ‘Wala’, ‘Rano’, ‘Uripiv’, ‘NortheastMalakula’ and‘ Malakula’as separate‘ languages’would suggest that there aresixdistinct languageshere. However,there isin factjust a single language involved,and all ofthese different answerssimply refer tolocations where thatlanguage is spoken at different levels of generality. Anotherproblem relatesback to the issueof the boundarybetween language anddialect. While the distinctioncan be difficult enough in purely linguistic terms,folk perceptions onthis question can vary quite considerablyin Vanuatu. There isa widespreadtendency in Melanesiafor people toexaggerate minor differences in speech in suchsmall-scale communities. In linguisticallyhighly fracturedsouthern Malakula, for instance, the separatelynamed varieties of Ayiauleian, Mbotkot,Natanggan and Nioleien are,to a linguist,mutually intelligible dialectsof a single language (Charpentier, 1982:44), though there isno local namefor the language asa whole.It is likely, therefore, thata linguisticallynaive censusenumerator would end upcountingmany more languages than a linguist would recognise in the same area. Atthe sametime, other individuals may underestimatelinguistic differences. While mostpeople fromPaama and Southeast Ambrym wouldimmediately recognise thatthere aretwo quite distinctlanguages involved, I havesometimes heardpeople saythatthe twolanguages are ‘ the same’. Such aclaimcan only be interpreted asimplicitly comparingthe language of SoutheastAmbrym with bothPaamese and the otherlanguages of Ambrym thatpeople maybe familiar withto some extent. It does not take even alinguisticallyfairly naiveperson very long torealise that although Paamese and Southeast Ambrym aredifferent languages,there aremany more similarities between Paameseand Southeast Ambrym thanthere arebetween SoutheastAmbrym andthe languagesspoken onother parts of Ambrym.A speaker ofPaamese hearing SoutheastAmbrymese when itis spoken canfrequently recognise words,and occasionally even complete phrases,even if the overallmeaning isobscure. However, a speaker of Paamesehearing normalspeech fromany other part of Ambrym isalmost guar- anteedto recognise nothing.The expressed opinion thatPaamese and Southeast

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Ambrymese are‘ the same’should therefore be interpreted in linguistic termsas meaning that‘ astwo separate languages go, Paamese and Southeast Ambrym arenot as different fromeach other as some other languages are’ . Again, however,a linguisticallynaive census enumerator should not be expected tobe able to read such subtleties in this kind of answer. Forsome parts of Vanuatu, the only sourcesof linguistic informationthat we haveabout the distributionof locallanguages are very shortwordlists, gathered in mostcases by people whohad little (or no) specialfamiliarity with the languagesof thatarea. In suchcases, it is perhaps inevitable thatforms will be either phonemically over- orunderdifferentiated, aswell assometimes being incorrectlytranscribed or given anincorrect translation, or even being mixed 60 Current Issues in Language Planning

withunrecognised illicitloans either fromother local languages, or even from Bislama.Such listshave been takenby Tryon(1976) as the basisfor a lexicosta- tisticalcomparison in orderto arriveat anestimate of the number oflanguagesin anarea, with the lexicostatisticalfigures inevitably being distorted– almost invariably downwards – as a result. Lexicostatisticsis, in anycase, nothing but avery crude methodof determining the number oflanguages in agiven area.The resultsof anyapplication of this methodshould always be regardedat best only assuggestive, tobe testedlater againstmore detailed information involving observationson the ground oflocal language choicealong with local statements about mutual intelligibility, aswell asinformationabout degrees ofstructural and phonological divergence between linguisticvarieties. For some parts of Vanuatu – mostnotably parts of the Torres andBanks Islands, Espiritu Santo and Malakula – wearecompletely relianton very shortwordlists for any conclusions about how many languages may be spoken in those areas. While Tryon’s (1976)massive lexicostatistical survey ofthe languagesof Vanuatuproduced somevaluable hypotheses aboutthe numbers oflanguages in someareas,these haveprobably sometimesunjustifiably cometo be regardedas acceptedfact by lesswell-informed outsiders.Semantic errors – orfailure to recognise thatdifferent formsin twowordlists represent legitimatevariants in bothvarieties – resulted in published cognatefigures thatcan repeatedly be shownon the basisof moreaccurate later information to beasmuch as20%too low.Such discrepancieshave clearly led toerrorsin the drawingof a number of language boundaries.A reinterpretationof Tryon’s datasuggests that he may haverecognised mutually intelligible varietiesas distinct languages in asignificantnumber ofcases, thereby providing anunjustifiably high number of languagesin the country.Partly for this reason, then, the widely quotedfigure of 105languagesfor Vanuatu has been tentativelyrevised downwardsto the figure of80,which is felt tobe moreplausible given the natureof the datathat we are forced to operate with at the present.

Religious languages Vanuatuis today an overwhelmingly Christiancountry, as indicatedby the nationalmotto LongGod yumi stanap ‘In Godwe stand’. Thissituation results fromextensive missionactivity dating from around the mid-1800s,with the new faithbeing well establishedin mostparts of the archipelagoby the firstdecades ofthe 20thcentury. However,there stillremain pockets of animistor ‘cargocult’

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 resistance in parts of Tanna, Malakula and Espiritu Santo. Priorto the widespreadacceptance of Christianity,the Melanesian people practiseda range ofanimistbeliefs, but their traditionalworldview involved the readyacceptance of manyoutside practices and items of technology.The Chris- tianitythat has evolved in Vanuatuinvolves something of asyncretismbetween abelief in traditionalspirits and the newly introducedChristian faith. 10 While Christianmissionaries often attemptedto suppress traditionalpractices, some Christianceremonies came to be tied in withtraditional celebrations, such as that for the harvest of the new season’s yams, which is associated with Easter. 11 Traditionalsong-styles in Melanesia,in whichessential aspects of the tradi- tionalreligion areoften expressed, were often only partlyunderstandable. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 61

Lindstrom(1990: 121– 2) points out that on Tanna, formulaic songs and spells typicallyinclude nonsense words,which are often interpreted asbeing the speech ofthe ancestors.Such ‘opaque nonsense’, he indicates,allows individuals tobe seen asrevealing knowledge, while atthe sametime maintaining its secrecy,and thereby alsoits value asa commodity.Given thatsuch phenomena arewidespread in Melanesia(Lindstrom, 1990: 151), one mightsuppose that earlyChristian Ni-Vanuatu wouldhave expected thatthe varietyof their languagesthat were used forthe new religion shouldbe different in significant waysfrom the ordinaryspoken languages.This has led in somecases to an apparentwillingness amongspeakers of Vanuatulanguages to accept structur- allyodd translations into their languagesby European missionariesas modelsto emulate in producing new written religious texts. Religion,literacy and education for much ofVanuatu’s pre-colonialand colo- nialhistory were very closelyintertwined. All ofthe writingsystems that are used formost of the locallanguages in the countryhave been developed by Christianmissionaries of avarietyof denominationsover the pastcentury anda half,with most orthographies being produced in the 19thand early 20th centuries,based on the Romanalphabet, often withsome adaptation involving the use ofdiacritics. 12 Literacywas originally taught in church-run schools,whose primarypurpose fora long timewas simply topropagatethe Christianmessage (Lynch, 1979:9– 15). Just over half ofthe languagesof the countryhave had at leastsome printed materialsproduced in themat somestage by church organisations,and some of the majorproponents of vernacularliteracy in the modern contextare also primarily religious organisations,such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Some locallanguages were adoptedfor use asreligious languagesalso outsidetheir traditionalterritories, which gavethem added status as religious languages.Those languages that are known to havebeen adoptedin thisway as mission lingua francas in Vanuatu include the following:

(1) Aulua:The Aulua language ofMalakulawas propagated by the Presbyte- rianChurch in the 19thcentury asamissionlingua francaamong speakers ofthe BanamBay, Port Sandwich, Maskelynes, Avok,Nisvai, Nasvang and Axamb languages of the south-eastern part of the island. (2) West Ambrym:The language ofWestAmbrym wasapparently alsoused asa lingua francaamong speakers of the South Ambrym andNorth Ambrym languages(but not,apparently, with speakers of SoutheastAmbrym, where

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 there isa possibilitythat Paamese may have been used inthisway to some extent). However,this did not prevent missionariesfrom also producing smallamounts of materialstranslated specifically forspeakers of the languages of South Ambrym, North Ambrym and Southeast Ambrym. (3) Mota:The language ofthe smallisland of Motain the BanksIslands has a particularlyinteresting historyas a missionlanguage. Tryon(1996b: 619–20) reports that Bishop Patteson was responsible forthe use ofMotafor teachingpurposes forover half acentury between the 1860sand 1931 at the trainingschool for the Anglican Missionthat was established on Norfolk Island.13 Itwas eventually decided thattraining should be conductedin English,but during the period thatMota held sway,a regular newspaper 62 Current Issues in Language Planning

entitled OSalaUsusur ‘The wayofthe story’was produced in the language. Graduatesof thisinstitution were postedto anumber ofislandsthroughout the Torresand Banks islands of northern Vanuatu, as well asAmbae, Maewoand Pentecostwhere the Anglican Church was(andstill is) influential.14 Since Motawas abandoned as alanguage ofinstructionat the mission trainingschool in 1931in favourof English, the use ofMotaoutside its home islandhas declined considerablyin the intervening years,though the Mota word mama ‘father’is still widely used in the areaswhere Motawas formerly used asachurchlanguage asatermof addressfor an Anglican priest. (4) Efate-Shepherds :The only otherarea of Vanuatuwhere amissionlanguage wasused outsideits traditional area is in the centralislands of Efateand the Shepherd group. The situationthat developed there wasunique, andis particularlyworthy of mention. Clark (1985: 4) refers tothree separate attemptsto create a writtenstandard uniting the separatelanguages of the area, each of which exhibits a certain amount of dialect variation: (a) In 1889,atranslationof the New Testamentwas produced in whatwas intended torepresent anartificiallycreated compromise between the quite distinct South Efate and Nakanamanga languages. (b) Asecondattempt in 1908involved a translationof the OldTestament thatwas produced withsome bookswritten in the localvariety spoken in HavannahHarbour, some in the varietyspoken onNguna,and some in the speech ofErakor on the southernpart of Efate. This translation failed tobeacceptedbecause the South Efatesections were simply not sufficiently intelligible to readers from further north. (c) Finally, anartificial written standard combining featuresfrom the Nguna andTongoa varieties of Nakanamanga was created.This trans- lationwas more successful, being used throughoutthe Nakana- manga-speaking area,as well asby speakersof the separateEmae and Namakirlanguages. Clark (1985: 4) reportsthat this written variety is stillwidely used, though itshould be pointed outthat there isalso smallbody of translatedmaterial in the quite separateNamakir language.

Onthe subject ofreligious languages,some additional comment is warranted inthissection on the formof religious translationsinto Vanuatu’ s vernaculars andthe extent towhichthese translationshave had an impacton secularliteracy

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 practices.Christian missionaries came to Vanuatuwith a range oflinguistic apti- tudes.Some learned the localvernaculars extremely well andproduced quite workabletranslations of the New Testament(or greater or lesseramounts of the Bible). The languagesof Vanuatuvary somewhat in their phonologicaland morphologicalcomplexity, with the languagesof the southernislands exhibiting the greatest degree of phonological and morphological complexity. Translatedmaterials in the Erromanganlanguage, in particular,systemati- callyincorporate a wide range ofclearly ungrammatica lconstructionsin printed textsthat have been in regular use onthe islandfor generations. This, combined withan awkward and inconsistent spelling system,as well asa considerableamount of apparently archaicvocabulary, serves to render much The Language Situation in Vanuatu 63

ofthe printed literaturein the language almostunreadable formany younger speakers. There wouldbe littlepoint in presenting asimple catalogueof grammatical errorsin the linguistic workof 19th-century European missionarytranslators if there hadbeen noenduring effects fromthe workthat they did.A catechismand hymnalin Erromanganwere produced in 1867and these hymnscontinue tobe sung ona regular basistoday. The originalhymns and catechism, as well asthe Lord’s Prayer,have been reprinted (almostwithout change) manytimes over the years.The latestreprinting wasin 1992,and in thisversion of the hymn book,a largenumber ofnewly produced hymnswas addedto the originalcollection in a volumeentitled Narufotompor Erromango ‘Hymnsof Erromango’ . These were all writtenby nativespeakers of Erromangan under the supervisionof anexclu- sively Erromangan publishing committee. Many ofthe newly composedhymns that are included in the 1992reprint of the hymnalcontain structural features that do not appear in the normalspoken language atall,or which appearonly very rarely.For the mostpart, these diver- gent featurescorrespond to some of the moreunusual featuresof the oldest hymnsand other religious materialsthat were originallyproduced by the 19th-centurymissionaries. Effectively, then, the linguistic featuresfound in translatedmaterials, which originate from the workof the firstmissionaries, appearto havebeen adoptedas modelsfor a new varietyof writtenecclesiastical Erromangan. Thisvariety differs in significantways from the ordinaryspoken language, andis only ever used in the productionof written ecclesiastical texts such as hymns.Some ofthese featuresinclude verbalprefixes which areillicitly remod- elled in the directionof the correspondingindependent pronouns,e.g. ko(k)le- ‘we(plural inclusive future tense)’is often writtenincorrectly as koskle-, because ofpartial similarity with the free formpronoun kos ‘we(plural inclusive)’. The quite distinctcategories of inalienable andalienable possessionin the spoken language areincorrectly collapsed together in thiswritten ecclesiastical variety, withthe suffix expressing athirdperson singular inalienable possessorbeing re-analysedas partof the root,and this new noun isthen markedwith a post- posedpossessive pronoun thatnormally expresses only analienable possessor. Thus,in contrastto spoken ni-m ‘yourname’ we often find in nineteenth-century hymnswritten by European missionaries– aswell ashymns recently composed by Erromangans– the onceincorrect construction ni-n sorom toexpressthe same meaning, despite the factthat it is literally nonsensical, meaning ‘yourhis/ her

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 name’. Effectively, then, the earlymissionaries on Erromangoestablished a written variety of the language as an ecclesiastical literary norm. In doingthis, these missionarieswere doing nothingunique in Vanuatu, though the extent of their ungrammaticaladventurism was certainly more noticeablein Erromanganbecause ofthe particularcomplexity of the language thatthey were attemptingto translate into. Early biblical translationsinto some ofthe otherlanguages of Vanuatualso contain some structurally and stylistically oddfeatures. In the caseof Paamese,biblical materialsin the locallanguage are alsono longer nearly aspublicly accessible,as there havebeen noreprintsfor manydecades. Such materialshave therefore nothad the sameeffect onPaama asonErromangoin termsof providing amodelfor a modernwritten ecclesiasti- 64 Current Issues in Language Planning

calform of the language. However,when Paamesepeople dohave a chanceto refer tothese oldmaterials, any deviations from normal conversational patterns thatresult in difficulty ofunderstandingare generally attributedto the failure of the readerto understand the esteemed ‘oldlanguage’ , ratherthan being explained as earlier missionary errors of translation. Early(personal communication) reports that native speakers of languageson Epi withwhom he hasworked on Bible translationprojects will often accept– andsometimes even produce themselves– translationsthat are completely ungrammatical,unnatural, or even unintelligible, aslong asthey feel thatthey somehowaccurately reflect the sourcetext that they aretranslating from. Even if translatorshave no previous model of materials badly translatedby earlier missionaries,it seems that they areprepared toproduce writtenreligious materialsthat violate their ownnative-speaker intuitionsabout the language, inkeep- ing witha widespreadassumption that religious language mustbe somehow ‘special’. However,there islittleevidence thatany of the aberrantfeatures in the trans- latedwritten literatures have systematically made their way into any spoken variety ofmodern Vanuatu languages.When Erromanganspray and preach in church,they speak spontaneously,without the help ofnotes or pre-prepared sermons, 15 and the resulting speech istypically much more like the ordinaryspoken language,and is notcharacterised by the samepreference forstructurally aberrant and archaic featuresthat we find in,for example, recently composedhymns. Christianmissionary activity during the 19thand early 20th centuries was generally conductedexclusively throughthe medium oflocal languages, and people completely avoidedthe use ofBislama as a language ofreligion. Itshould be remembered thatat thattime, Bislama was lexically andstructurally a fairly basicsort of language thatwas used predominantlyon plantations. There were often strainedrelationships between European missionariesand labour recruit- ers,with the formeraccusing the latter(often quite correctly)of attempting to kidnap people againsttheir will,forcing themto leave their homeislands for long periods.Those Ni-Vanuatu whowent voluntarily to workin Queensland often didso to escape trouble orobligations in their homecommunities, so Bislamaeffectively cameto be regarded asthe language ofsocialdeviants and troublemakers, both by missionaries and by members of local communities. Given these sortsof attitudes,it is scarcely surprising that the questionseldom aroseof making use ofBislama as alanguage forreligious purposes.In anycase, Bislamawas probably notsufficiently widely knownin manyparts of Vanuatu

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 during the late1800s and early 1900s. It is quite likely thatvery few womenwould havespoken the language (andeven today,middle-aged andolder women from manyparts of Vanuatu often speak the language withoutgreat confidence). In addition,Bislama would not have been spoken by children (andagain, in some partsof Vanuatu,children donot learn to speak Bislamauntil they begin having socialcontact with people outsidetheir home communities when they begin to attendboarding school to complete their upper primarylevels ofeducation). There were, however,some apparent exceptions. Pè re Pionnier wasaCatholic priestwho was posted to Vanuatuduring the periods1886– 87 and1893– 99. He failed tolearn any local language, andapparently made use insteadof Bislamain hisdealings with local people. Itis likely, however,that his use ofBislama was The Language Situation in Vanuatu 65

oralrather than written. He did leave somewritten records of materials that he hadproduced in Bislamato assist him in religious services(Pionnier, 1913),but there isno evidence thatthese materialswere intended tobe readby localpeople. Missionorganisations largely avoidedthe use of Bislamaas a religious language even until the 1960s,as itwas not regarded asalanguage thatcould successfully ‘reachthe hearts’of Ni-Vanuatu (Camden,personal communication).However, attitudes towards Bislama began tochange rapidly in the 1970s when itbecame alanguage ofseriouspolitical debate in the run-up toindependence. Aroundthis time mission organisations began alsoto take the language seriouslyas anevangelicalmedium. The translationof partsof the New Testa- mentinto Bislama commenced in 1967under the influence ofPastor Bill Camden,and the four gospelswere circulatingin print,at least in partsof EspirituSanto, shortly before the formationof the firstof the politicalparties. In 1971the four gospelswere finalised in Bislamaas Gud Nyusbilong Jisas Krais (‘The GoodNews of Jesus Christ’), andthe Actsof the Apostleswas published as Ol Wok blong ol Aposol in 1974. Since then there hasbeen aseriesof hymnbooksproduced inBislama,known as the Nyu Laef (‘New Life’) books,and these arewidely used throughoutthe country,in somecases alongside older vernacular hymnals, while inothercases almostcompletely replacing vernacularhymnals, which on many islands are nowoften outof print.In 1996the full textof the translationof the Oldand New Testamentsappeared inBislamaas Baebollong Bislama (‘The Bible inBislama’). Within aperiod ofthirtyyears, Bislama has changed froma language thatwas almostcompletely avoidedin religious contextsto the language in whichthe largest number of people now read religious materials. 16 Church servicesin villagesaround Vanuatu these daysare often fairly multilingual occasions.The sermonand associated announcements may be given in the locallanguage if the pastor/elder/priestis from the localcommunity, while hymnsmay be in either the locallanguage orBislama.Prayers may be offered in the locallanguage orBislama, with more fundamentalist Protestant participants– from,for example, the Apostolic,Seventh Day Adventistor Assemblies ofGod churches – seemingly preferring Bislamaover the locallanguage, and,a littleincongruously, often preferring the archaicKing JamesEnglish versionof the Bible forreadings. Ultimately, however, the choiceof language seemsto be a matterof personaltaste, as well asbeing dependent onwhether ornot there are anyvisitors speaking otherlanguages who might be present. Bible readingsare morelikely tobe in Bislama,or even ametropolitanlanguage (Masing,1992: 32),

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 though anyfollowing exegesis forthe benefit ofthe congregationwill usually be presented in the local language. However,even todayattitudes against the use ofBislamaand in favourof the use ofvernacularsin churchare sometimes encountered. Masing(1992: 4– 5), for example, reportsa dispute whichbroke outin her localcommunity on Malakula in whichan older person attacked some younger preachersfor having used Bislamarather than the localAulua language in church.As nooutside visitors were present, the elder maintainedthat the ‘much richer’Aulua language should have been used. Ihavealready mentioned anapparenttendency amongmore fundamentalist groupsto makegreater use ofBislamain church services,in contrastto estab- 66 Current Issues in Language Planning

lished churchessuch as the Presbyterians,the Anglicansand the Catholics,who makegreater use ofvernaculars in sermonsand prayer. In termsof written churchmaterials, newly establishedreligious organisationsin Vanuatusuch as the Mormons,the Baha’i andthe Seventh Day Adventistsappear to be putting all oftheir effortsinto providing writtenmaterials exclusively in Bislama.The longer-established churchesare still making some effort toproduce new vernac- ulartranslations in avarietyof languages, with the Summer Instituteof Linguis- ticsworking under the auspicesof the VanuatuChristian Council, with translationprojects currently under wayfor a number oflanguages,including someon Tanna,Epi, Malakulaand Espiritu Santo. Yet other vernacular translationsof biblical materialshave been produced by different church organisations on Malakula, Ambae and Tanna, as well as into the language of Ifira. English andFrench arelittle used in the religious contextin Vanuatuwith an exclusively Ni-Vanuatu congregation,except foran occasionalBible reading,or when producing fixed expressionssuch as when people saygracebefore ameal (‘Forwhat we areabout to receive ...’)orwhen one feels the spiritof the Lord suddenly upon oneself (‘Hallelujah, praisethe Lord!’). However,while Catholic sermonsin ruralcommunities are generally given in the locallanguage or Bislama,the liturgy itself –withits versicles from the priestand its set responses fromthe congregation– isonly celebrated inFrench. Effectively, then, the incom- prehensible LatinMass has in Vanuatupresumably become the incomprehensi- ble French Mass for some rural Catholics. However,although English andFrench arelittleused in Vanuatuas religious languages,there isa strongassociation in Vanuatubetween being Catholicand francophoneon the one hand,and, by implication,between being Protestantand anglophone onthe other.This association derives historicallyfrom the factthat the Catholicfaith was initially introduced to Vanuatu by exclusively French- speaking priestsfrom France and New Caledonia,while the variousProtestant denominationswere introducedby English speakersfrom a varietyof countries. Becauseschools in Vanuatuwere establishedin the firstplace by the missions,it wasonly naturalthat Catholic missions would teach French asasubject, while Protestant missions would be expected to teach English as a subject. Itshould be pointed out,however, that the francophone-Catholicand anglophone-Protestantoverlap actually represents somethingof a stereotype. While there areprobably relativelyfew professed Catholicsin Vanuatuwho are notfrancophone, there arecertainly many Protestants who have attended French-medium governmentschools, and these schoolsare completely inde-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 pendent ofthe CatholicChurch, and there arealsosome francophone Protestants who have links with evangelical churches in neighbouring New Caledonia. 17

Languages of literacy Asindicated in the preceding section,‘ languagesof literacy’ and ‘ languagesof religion’are by andlarge coterminous in Vanuatuin the contextof localvernaculars.Masing (1992: 51) shows that in the ruralsociety that she investigated,just overthree quartersof all books in the village were religious in content,and my ownexperience wouldsuggest that this would be fairly typicalfor any randomly chosenvillage in the country.About two thirds of the booksthat she counted were in ametropolitanlanguage (in thiscase, English), justover aquarterwere in The Language Situation in Vanuatu 67

Table 2 Distribution ofbooks in Lumbulbatui village accordingto language and content Religious Secular English 295 136 Bislama 160 25 Aulua 21 0

Bislama,and justunder 4%were in the locallanguage. Asistypically the casein ruralareas, vernacular books have often been outof print formany years. These booksare often oldand fragile, withdamaged spines, lost covers or tornor miss- ing pages.Cyclones regularly ravagethe islandsand these takea huge tollon people’s valued books,and even somethingas simple asspilling sweettea on a book will inevitably attract destructive cockroaches. Despite the closerelationship between literacyand religion, there isstillsome validityin Vanuatuin makinga distinctionbetween ‘languagesof religion’and ‘languagesof literacy’in thatthere aresomerecognisable distinctions in literacy practiceaccording to the natureof the domain.The figures inTable 2,derived fromMasing (1992: 52), demonstrate clearly that in thisrural Malakula community,vernacular literacy is encountered exclusively in the domainof religious materials.My ownexperience suggestsagain that this distribution of materials according to language and domain is quite typical for the entire country. There aresome language communitiesin Vanuatuin whichsecular materials areavailable, though the range oftitlesis invariably very smallfor any given language, andthe number oflanguages involved is small.Crowley (1980) and Crowley& Mael (1984)are secular sources for Paamese, Carlot (1983) for South Efate,Viralalao (1981) and Vira et al.(1997)for Duidui, Tabi& Buli (1985)and Mabonlala(1986) for Apma, Luwi et al. (1988)for Lewo, and Crowley (1997a) for Erromangan,all of whichare shortcollections of vernacularstories, for the most parttraditional. There arealso some collections of vernacular texts written by academics,though the natureof the accompanyingtranslations and discussion clearlyindicates that they were intended primarilyfor an academicrather than a localreading audience, andthere hasgenerally been noattempt to distribute these academic volumes to members of local communities. Charpentier (1997:226– 8) arguesthat literacy, being anon-traditionalprac- tice,has no legitimate place inmodernVanuatu societies, implying itonly takes rootwhen apeople havebecome completely westernised,and that any vernacu-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 larliteracy in particularis seen asbeing ‘useless’(Charpentier, 1997:228). In fact, however,observations show that people engage in asignificantamount of active literacythroughout Vanuatu. Masing (1992: 57) reports that the majorityof people in the communitythat she investigatedwrite fairly frequently (though I think itwould be fairto say that people generally writefar less frequently than we find amongwesterners). English wasthe language thatwas most widely reportedas being used amongsecondary school leavers, while otherspredomi- nantlyused Bislama.Nobody in her survey group reportedusing the local vernacularfor writing, though abroadersample over a wider areawould probably haveshown people using the locallanguage, mosttypically for letter writing. Arange ofdifferent sortsof writtenmessages are produced by members ofthe 68 Current Issues in Language Planning

community,ranging frominvitations to social functions, reports of village meet- ings, assignment of communal tasks, requests for financial support and letters. Forthe mostpart, however, secular literacy in Vanuatuis practisedincreas- ingly throughthe medium ofBislamaor metropolitanlanguages, with minimal use being madeof locallanguages. Lynch (1979)andCrowley (1989a: 123) report thatone ofthe majorconsequences ofthe reliance onmetropolitan languages for accessto awide range ofinformation has effectively led tothe establishmentof a ‘New InformationOrder’ in Vanuatusocieties, in which the controlof valuable informationis no longer exclusively in the handsof respected elders,but isnow only accessibleto younger formallyeducated people. Thiscan be seen asthrust- ing akind of‘ prematurematurity’ upon these younger people, aswell asresult- ing in the traditionallyhighly valued knowledge ofolderpeople being devalued. There hasnever been anycomprehensive survey atthe nationallevel ofliter- acylevels in Vanuatu,and any published figures probably represent estimates. Asmentioned earlier,the 1999census included aquestionon reading andwrit- ing abilityin ‘alocallanguage’ , Bislama,English, French or‘anyother language’ . However,even before the resultsof thiscensus are published, cautionwill need tobe exercised in interpreting the results,as different enumeratorsappear to haveinterpreted their instructionsdifferently. Some insistedon ticking justa single box,assuming that it was not possible tobe literatein morethan one language. Otherenumerators, while allowingfor the ticking ofmorethan one box,were forcedto treat both fully competentvernacular literacy and marginal vernacular literacy with the same tick for ‘yes’.

Linguistic profile of Ni-Vanuatu Table 3presentsa listof the 80actively spoken vernacularsin Vanuatu, arrangedalphabetically, along with an indication of the islandwhere each language isspoken, itscurrently estimatednumber ofspeakers, and a figure indicatingthe proportionof the nationalpopulation that is represented by that language. The columndealing withthe writingsystem indicates whether any printed materialshave been produced in thatlanguage, alongwith a ratingof the writing system according to the following scale: ***** writingsystem available in print thatis fully in accordwith modern principles of orthography design **** writingsystem that is fully in accordwith modern principles oforthogra- phy design whichis not yet in print orwhich iscurrently undergoing development Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 ***writingsystem in print whichis basically sound according to modern principles oforthographydesign, but perhaps withrelativelyminor imperfections **writingsystem in print only inoldsources with no recent studyto attest to its reliability *writingsystem in print only in oldsources which is known to be ofdubious quality Øno writing system at all known to be in print. Where somestars are included in parentheses,e.g. ***(*), thismeans that there is anestablishedthree-star writing system, but thatimprovements on this in the light of more modern linguistic study are currently under way. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 69

Table 3 Vanuatu local languages and their speaker-populations Language Island SpeakersPercentage of Writing name population sytem Anejom Aneityum 900 0.46 ***(**) Apma Pentecost 7,800 4.02 *** Aulua Malakula 750 0.38 ** Avok Malakula 500 0.26 Ø Axamb Malakula 750 0.38 ** Baetora Maewo 1,330 0.69 Ø Baki Epi 350 0.18 ***(*) Banam Bay Malakula 900 0.46 Ø Bierebo Epi 800 0.41 ***(*) Cape Cumberland Santo 2,400 1.24 ** Central Santo Santo 1,400 0.72 (****) Duidui Ambae 8,700 4.48 ***(**) Emae Shepherds 400 0.21 ** Erromangan Erromango 1,900 0.98 *(****) Futuna-Aniwa Futuna, Aniwa 1,500 0.77 ***(**) Hiw Torres 235 0.12 Ø Ifira-Mele Efate 3,500 1.80 *** Kiai Santo 450 0.23 Ø Kwamera Tanna 3,500 1.80 ***(**) Lakona Banks 1,250 0.64 ** Lamen Epi 850 0.44 ***(*) Laravat Malakula 675 0.35 Ø Lenakel Tanna 11,500 5.93 ***(**) Lendamboi Malakula 800 0.41 Ø Lewo Epi 2,200 1.14 ***(*) Loh Torres 500 0.26 ** Mae Malakula 900 0.46 Ø Mafea Santo 250 0.13 Ø Malua Bay Malakula 500 0.26 Ø

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Maskelynes Malakula 1,100 0.57 (****) Merlav Banks 1,550 0.80 Ø Mkir Epi 175 0.09 Ø Mores Santo 75 0.04 Ø Mota Banks 900 0.46 *** Mpotovoro Malakula 430 0.22 Ø Mwotlap Banks 2,200 1.14 Ø Naha’ai Malakula 1,100 0.57 Ø Nakanamanga Efate, Shepherds 9,500 4.90 *** 70 Current Issues in Language Planning

Table 3 (cont.) Vanuatu local languages and their speaker-populations

Language Island SpeakersPercentage of Writing name population sytem Namakir Shepherds 3,750 1.93 *** Nasvang Malakula 275 0.14 Ø Nefe’ei Malakula 330 0.17 Ø Nefwerfwer Malakula 1,250 0.64 Ø Nevat Malakula 400 0.21 Ø Ninde Malakula 1,100 0.57 ** North Ambrym Ambrym 4,900 2.53 ** North Tanna Tanna 5,000 2.58 ***(*) Northeast AmbaeAmbae 5,000 2.58 ***** Northeast MalakulaMalakula 10,000 5.0 ***(*) Nume Banks 900 0.46 Ø Paamese Paama, Lopevi 6,000 3.09 ***(**) Port Sandwich Malakula 1,200 0.62 Ø Raga Pentecost 6,500 3.35 *** Sa Pentecost 2,500 1.29 Ø Sakao Santo 4,000 2.06 * Seke Pentecost 600 0.31 Ø Shark Bay Santo 800 0.41 Ø Sinesip Malakula 600 0.31 ** South Ambrym Ambrym 2,500 1.29 ** South Efate Efate 6,000 3.09 *** South Gaua Banks 330 0.17 Ø South-Central SantoSanto 2,200 1.13 Ø Southeast Ambrym Ambrym 3,700 1.91 *** Southeast Santo Santo 1,000 0.52 Ø Southwest SantoSanto 4,000 2.06 Ø Southwest Tanna Tanna 5,000 0.52 ** Sunwadaga Maewo 1,400 0.72 Ø Sunwadia Maewo 650 0.34 **

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Tamambo Malo 4,000 2.06 *** Tolomako Santo 900 0.46 ** Tutuba Santo 500 0.26 Ø Unua-PangkumuMalakula 800 0.41 ** Ureparapara Banks 440 0.27 Ø Vao Malakula 1,900 0.98 ** V’enen Taut Malakula 3,350 1.73 ***** Vera’a Banks 275 0.14 ** Vovo Malakula 475 0.24 Ø The Language Situation in Vanuatu 71

Table 3 (cont.) Vanuatu local languages and their speaker-populations

Language Island SpeakersPercentage of Writing name population sytem Vurës Banks 1,050 0.53 ** West Ambrym Ambrym 1,200 0.62 ** Whitesands Tanna 7,500 3.87 ** Wusi Santo 300 0.15 Ø

Itshould be pointed out,however, that for those languages that are indicated ashavingno writing system in print (markedon the tableas Ø),members oflocal communitiesoften dowrite in these languages.When people dothis, they typi- callytransfer spelling conventionson an ad hoc basisfrom more widely known writingsystems, such as those of other vernaculars, Bislama, or metropolitan languages.The resulting writingsystem may be evaluatedin linguistic termsas anywhere between one- andfive-star status, depending onavarietyof factors, suchas the orthographiccreativity of the individualwriter, or the inherent difficulty involved in writing that particular language. These figures addup toa totalof 90.65%of the populationof Vanuatuthat is indicatedas speaking one ofthe 80indigenous languagesof the country.The remainderrepresent the smallproportion of the populationwho are not Ni-Vanuatu,along with non-vernacular speakers who represent the minorityof Ni-Vanuatu,who live predominantlyin the urban centresand who grow up for the mostpart as first-language Bislamaspeakers (Crowley, 1995a). While there is somevariation from island to islandin termsof the proportionof people wholive in townas againstrural areas, this is generally closeto the nationalaverage of 15%urban dwellers and85% ruraldwellers forall languages. (Figures 4–13 show the geographical locations of the languages shown in Table 3.) Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

Figure 4 Torres Islands 72 Current Issues in Language Planning

Figure 5 Banks Islands

Apartfrom young children, itis extremely rarefor anybody in Vanuatuto be monolingual.Most people speak their owncommunity language aswell as Bislamawith complete fluency. In someof the linguisticallymore diverse islands,especially in partsof Malakulaand Espiritu Santo, it is not uncommon forpeople alsoto speak one ortwo (and sometimesmore) other local vernaculars in additionto their own,as well, ofcourse, as Bislama(and possibly some English and/orFrench). Asubstantialnumber havelearned English orFrench (and sometimesboth) atschool, with the 1989census figures showingthat 40.5% of people overthe age ofsixclaimed to be able tospeak someEnglish, while 21.4% ofpeople claimedto be able tospeak someFrench (Office ofStatistics,1991: 127). Itshould be pointed out,however, that the vastmajority of people seldomactu- ally use either of these languages for spoken purposes.

Language Spread

Languages in education Siegel (1996a:99– 100) indicatesthat western-style educationin Vanuatuwas

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 setup in the firstplace by missionarieswho operated initially through the medium ofthelocallanguages, and promotedvernacular literacy, with the ulti- mateobjective ofenabling people tounderstandthe new messageof Christian- ity.The contentside ofearly schoolingwas notvery broad,and Lynch (1979:9) reportsone elderly Ni-Vanuatu whohadattendedone ofthese missionschools speaking in Bislamaand describing hiseducation as basically Baibel,baibel, singsingnomo ‘Bible, moreBible, andjust singing’. The productsof mission schoolsby andlarge hada very restrictedaccess to information, as the only printed materialsthat such people hadaccess to were entirely religious in content,with typically noinformationbeing madeavailable to people about localissues, history or culturalpractices (Lynch, 1979;Crowley, 1989a: 123). The Language Situation in Vanuatu 73

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Figure 6 Espiritu Santo

Masing(1992: 33) reports that the missionschools did notdivide studentsup intoclasses. Students movedinstead from one learning taskto another at their ownpace asthey masteredthe previousstage. Students were required initiallyto recite the alphabetin the locallanguage andthen memorisematerial from the catechism,after which they were taughtto read, and then towrite, in the local language. Successful studentswere ultimatelysometimes taught something of either ofthe metropolitanlanguages, though thiswas not the ultimategoal of these mission schools. 74 Current Issues in Language Planning

Figure 7 Ambae, Maewo and Pentecost Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

The Anglo-French condominiumgovernment paid little attention to educa- tionfor most of itshistory, leaving responsibility forschooling in the handsof the missions,which continued tooperatethrough the medium ofthe vernaculars until the 1950s.From the 1960s,the Britishadministration moved to set up English-medium primaryschools in ruralareas in different partsof the country, while asecondaryschool and a teachertraining college were establishedin Port Vila.Seeing the politicalloyalties of the localpeople being tempted by the provisionof schoolsby their condominiumpartners, the French administration responded by settingup competing schools,often withbetter facilitiesand fund- The Language Situation in Vanuatu 75

Figure 8 Malakula

ing (andno school fees), tolure parentsto send their children insteadto French-medium schools.The currentgeneration of younger educated Ni-Vanuatu have,therefore, been educatedexclusively throughthe medium of one ofthe twometropolitan languages, with only the oldergenerations remem- bering what it means to experience vernacular education. Notonly wasvernacular literacy not taught in these governmentschools, but there havegenerally been strictrules prohibiting the use ofeither localvernacu- larsor Bislamaby studentsin schoolhours, both in English- andFrench-medium

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 schools.This has usually been witheither the tacitor explicit approvalof local parents,who came to see successin schoolas being closelylinked tosuccessful learning ofametropolitanlanguage, andthe use ofBislamaor local languages was regarded as interfering with this process. After Vanuatugained itsindependence in 1980,the governmentmoved to unify the twooriginally quite distinctsystems of education for the twolanguages intoa single nationalsystem. The intentionwas tohave a single nationalcurricu- lum toreplace the completely different curriculaof the twocondominium governments,which would be taughtequally throughthe medium ofthe two languagesin different setsof schoolsspread all around the country.There were tobe parallelteaching materials in bothlanguages, a single setof employment 76 Current Issues in Language Planning

Figure 9 Ambrym, Paama and Epi Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 provisionsfor teaching staff, and a single setof school fees forall schools regard- less of the medium of instruction. Under thisunified educationsystem, the Ministryof Educationnow encour- agesall children in Vanuatuto attend pre-primary kindergarten classes.These arewidely, though notuniversally, available throughout the country,being staffedby localpeople witha minimalamount of basic early childhood educa- tiontraining. These pre-schoolsare run entirely by localcommunities, and much ofthe labouris voluntary. The facilitiesare usually very basic,but children areat leastintroduced to the ideaof being in aclassroom.They participatein arange of pre-reading activitiesand perform otherstructured activities in preparationfor The Language Situation in Vanuatu 77

Figure 10 Efate and the Shepherd Islands Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

Figure 11 Erromango 78 Current Issues in Language Planning

Figure 12 Tanna Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013

Figure 13 Aniwa, Futuna and Aneityum The Language Situation in Vanuatu 79

formalschooling, often using locallymade artefacts or materials that can be found locally such as seeds and shells (Brown & Crowley, 1990). There seemsto be arange oflanguage practicesin kindergartens.Most kinder- gartenclasses are conducted in the locallanguages or sometimes Bislama, though children dosometimes get someexposure toEnglish orFrench in the songsor games that they aretaught.However, some urban kindergartensappear tomake much greateruse ofmetropolitanlanguages in orderto give children a headstart for the firstyear of primary schooling. Kindergartens in the townsare often privatelyrun asbusiness enterprises.Children attendingsuch kindergar- tensare certainly often exposed tomoreEnglish orFrench thanwould be the case in ruralareas, to prepare themfor what their parentspresumably hope isgreater success once they get to primary school. There hasfor some time now been sixyears of compulsory primary education in Vanuatu.Students usually attendlower primary classes in schoolsthat are close toa child’s localvillage sothey often continue tolive withtheir parentsin their ownvillage (orperhaps otherclose relatives if the schoolis a bit further away). Classesare conducted in either English orFrench by locallytrained Ni-Vanuatu teachers,for whom neither English norFrench istheir firstlanguage. While there areoften schoolrules in force prohibiting the use oflocal languagesor Bislama,the realityhas often been thatteachers who happen to comefromthe localcommunitydo makesome use oflocallanguagesto explain pointsthat are being taughtin English orFrench. Lynch(1996:247) reportsthat there wassomeofficialsanction in 1982fromthe ministryfor the use ofvernacularsin theteachingof traditionalor artisticsubject matter,though notin more academicsubjects. However, other ministerial directives on the place of vernacularsor Bislama in the classroomhave been lesspositive, with one ministerin 1995stating that any useoflanguages otherthan English orFrench in the classroomby teacherswould be regarded as‘professionalmisconduct’ (Lynch, 1996:248). The governmentof Vanuatu is currently in the final stagesof adopting an EducationMaster Plan, the drawingup ofwhichis being backed financiallyby the WorldBank, and which will be implemented withthe help ofanumber of otherinternational aid donors. Among other things, this plan proposesthat the currentuniversal six years of educationbe extended toeight years,and that early primaryeducation (i.e. auniversalpreparatory year, along with years one and twoof primaryschooling) should be conductedthrough the medium ofthe local vernacularin placeswhere the localcommunity make this choice. 18 The primary

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 motivationbehind thischange ofpolicy isan educationalone, with the argument being thatthe currentpolicy ofimpartinginitial literacy through an unfamiliar metropolitanlanguage iseducationally damaging to the child (andultimately, the country). However,the questionof language maintenanceis also seen asanimportant issue,the argumentbeing thatinstilling initialliteracy through the medium of the localvernacular will alsoserve tostrengthen locallanguages against the pressure ofmetropolitan languages. While there isperhaps sometruth to the claim thatincorporating local languages into the formaleducation system may give thoselanguages some additional status that they didnot have formerly, it has to be conceded thatthe overalleffect intermsof language maintenanceis not likely 80 Current Issues in Language Planning

tobe great,given thatthe mostthat is being proposedis the development oftwo years’worth of primary teaching materials, with no provisionat allfor the devel- opmentof broader-basedvernacular literacies operating at alllevels withinlocal societies. Itshould be stressedthat this plan isstill at the discussionstage, though there doesappear to be fairly widespreadpolitical and community support for it, as well asasubstantialdegree ofinterest having been expressed frompotential aid donors.However, there hasalso been avarietyof less positive reactions to the plan.Criticisms have come in particularfrom some in the francophonesector of the educationsystem, who suspect that there maybe ahidden agendato dimin- ishthe statusof French, despite explicit wordingwithin the plan itself that English-French officialbilingualism atthe nationallevel shouldnot only be maintained,but thatit should be strengthened. In particular,one ofthe specific goalsof the EducationMaster Plan is to promotegreater individual bilingualism in English and French at the upper secondary level. Bracken(1998) reports that the WorldBank backers of the proposedplan found ‘unanimoussupport among Ni-Vanuatu topreserve the country’s vernacularlanguages’ . However,it should be pointed outthat this sentiment clearly doesnot necessarily equate togiving unanimoussupport to the proposedrevi- sionsto educationalpolicy, and the people referred toin the WorldBank report assupporting the proposalmay be confusing the educationaladvantages of initialvernacular education and its potential spin-off in termsof language maintenance. Bracken(1998) also reports that the WorldBank backers encountered the greatestamount of oppositionfrom expatriate circles when earlier versionsof the MasterPlan were being drawnup. Such people typicallyexpressed concerns aboutthe practicalitiesof implementing sucha policy,or concerns that this policy wouldhave a negative effect onthe learning ofEnglish andFrench. The latterpoint is relatively easy to counteron the basisof evidence fromother countries, but the former is more serious. Since thisproposal has not yet entered itsinitial implementatio nstage,we haveno wayof knowing towhatextent allof the requirements forsuccess will betakenfully intoaccount. There istherefore adanger thatpolitical pressures bothfrom within Vanuatu and from expatriate advisers who are not completely familiarwith the linguistic situationon the ground in Vanuatumay force anattemptto implement thisplan tooquickly, withthe possibilitythat someessential consideration smaybe side-stepped. Forinstance, in 1999the Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Ministryof Education moved ahead to set up pilotprojects in individual schoolsin overa dozendifferent language areas.No realmonitoringprocesses were setin place,and there wasminimalspecial training provided forteachers. Teacherswere alsoexpected toproduce their ownreading materialson ministry-supplied rollsof brownpaper. If these issuesare not properly addressed andthe full implementationof the vernaculareducation proposal falters as a result,this may well sourthe appetite ofthe public foranother more carefully implemented proposalin the future. Itis planned tophase in initialvernacular education throughout the country overa period of atleast ten years,beginning in the early2000s. Some of the The Language Situation in Vanuatu 81

importantpractical questions that need tobe addressedbefore sucha policy could be successfully implemented would include the following:

(1) Itneeds tobe establishedwhich languages already have efficient and acceptedwriting systems that are reasonably widely used by members of the communityin orderto be able todecide whichlanguages could be brought intothis system earlier on,and which languages need further linguistic documentationand study before they canbe incorporatedinto the programme. (2) Anotherconsideration for determining whichlanguages can be brought intothe programmerelatively early involves the questionof which languagesare spoken in placeswhere there isregular exposure tothe written formof the language in the formof (atthe very least)a hymnal,or other religious materials. (3) Some unwrittenlanguages are spoken by dialectallyquite diverse communities,and it would need tobe establishedwhich linguistic communities wouldmost readily accepta single writingsystem for all varieties, rather thaninsisting on separatewriting systems being developed forthe different regional varieties. (4) Anotherconsideration is which languages have published dictionariesso that teachers can check the spellings of words. (5) Some languagesare spoken in areaswhere speakersof thatlanguage consti- tutethe soleschool population, and such languages could be brought into the programmerelatively early. In otherschools, however, there islikely to be alinguisticallymixed enrolment.In suchcases, more complex decisions would presumably be necessary. (6) Itwould need tobe establishedwhich schoolsare located in areaswhere Bislama,rather than local language, isthe majormedium oflocalexchange. In towns,as well asin somerural areas, the maincommunity language is Bislama,so the future roleof Bislamawithin the educationsystem of the countrywould need tobe addressed,and this may require acertainamount ofpublic re-educationgiven thatmany parents may harbour negative attitudes to Bislama in the educational context. (7) The questionof whichlanguages have trained personnel whoare capableof producing the relevantcurriculum materialsof anacceptablestandard will alsoneed tobe takeninto account. This will alsoinvolve determining the extent towhich designated teachers are themselves adequately literate in

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 their own languages. (8) The successof sucha programmewill alsodepend onestablishingwhich languageshave trained or trainable teachers. The proposal,as it is currently formulated,provides for unemployed Year10 leaverswho are resident in their localcommunities and are willing, tobetrainedas early primaryteachers. One problem isthat it is intended topay these teachers only afractionof what a fully trainedprimary teacher receives, even though they will beheavily involvedin thedemanding activityof materi- alspreparation. (9) Forsuch a programmeto succeed,it is essential that there shouldbe awrit- ten literaturein the locallanguage whichreflects the naturalform of the 82 Current Issues in Language Planning

language, ratherthan consisting exclusively oftranslatedbiblical materials. Such materialcould be incorporatedinto the curriculum in the formof story-telling and vernacular reading exercises. (10)Public acceptancewill alsohave to be considered.It is possible thatsome languageswill havespeakers who have been successfully primed andwho areenthusiastic about the ideaof initialvernacular education, while people in someareas may be reluctantto acceptchange. If thisreluctance is based onany misconceptions, there wouldbe aneed forthe re-educationof parents.I havealready referred tothe questionof public attitudesto Bislama,though public misconceptionsalso in somecases seem tocentre aroundthe ideathat it is intended to‘revive’moribund languageswhich haveonly ahandful of usually elderly speakers.Some members of the public alsomistakenly think that‘ vernacular’education in Vanuatumeans choosingone ofthe variouslanguages of the countryfor teaching in all of the country’s schools.

Such apolicy alsoneeds tobe implemented withgreat care to ensure thatall possible problems areanticipated before they arise,and so that all necessary trainingand resources development cantakeplace. Any implementationof such a programme also needs to be done with evaluation strategies at each stage. While somelanguages could be adoptedin the very nearfuture aslanguages of initialprimary instruction, there aremany other languages which are extremely poorlydescribed, andfor which wehavelittle idea of whatkind of writingsystem should be adopted.In othercases, languages may have been written forover a century in awritingsystem that is poorly suited to the sound systemof the language, whichit would possibly be counterproductiveto attemptto teachto children. In suchcases, it may even be essentialto develop a writingsystem from scratch on the basisof completely new linguisticresearch. There aresome parts of the countrywhere ourignorance of the linguistic situa- tionis soprofound thatwe areeven uncertainas tothe number ofthe languages thatare spoken. Finally, there areareas where there arereasonably well described languageswhich mayhave tolerably efficient writingsystems, but where weareuncertain as tothe locationof the precise boundariesbetween these languagesand those of neighbouring groups(assuming, of course,that discrete boundariescan even be drawn),as already noted in The Language Profile of Vanuatu. Forthe successfulimplementation of any policy ofuniversal initial vernacular

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 education,the descriptionof all languagesin the country– especially thosethat arespoken in areaswhere the languagesare particularly poorly known – mustbe encouraged,along with the recordingof spoken materialsin these languagesto formthe basisof asecularwritten literature that is not made up exclusively of translatedreligious materials.At the moment,however, there isno formal mech- anismavailable for systematically promoting the descriptionof the languagesof the country.The VanuatuCultural Centre canguide potentialacademic researchersin particulardirections, but ithas no resources to support the descriptionof particularlanguages that are seen ashavinghigh priorityif there arenoresearchersactively seeking permissionto carry out linguistic research in the country. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 83

Upper primaryclasses are often conductedin schoolsthat service a wider area,so students often need toattend schools as boarders outside their home language area.For some students, this may be the firsttime that they comeinto contactwith Bislama, though they usually rapidly acquirefluency in the language outsidethe schoolcontext (given thatthe language is,of course, normallyprohibited in the contextof formal schooling). For those students whoseupper secondaryeducation continues within their ownlanguage area, they maynot be exposed toBislamauntil they begin their secondaryschooling at aboutthe age of twelve.School rules will againtypically prohibit the use of languagesother than English orFrench, andat thislevel, teachersdo not attempt tomake use oflocal languages or Bislama as atoolfor explanation in the classroom as they sometimes do with junior students. Itis much moredifficult forstudents to be acceptedto secondary level in Vanuatu.Places are far more limited andonly about20% of the initialprimary intakeproceed tojunior secondaryschool (Masing, 1992: 24).Those who fail tobe acceptedoften return totheir localcommunity having undergone sixyears of schoolingin English orFrench, whichthey will in allprobability nolonger use except perhaps very occasionally(Masing, 1992: 32). Some will attemptto find jobsin town,though withsuch a low-level qualification,they aremost likely to acquireonly non-skilled jobsfor which a knowledge ofa metropolitanlanguage isof no specialvalue in anycase. Some vocationaltraining is available in rural areasfor such early school-leavers, but manysuch classes are conducted largely in Bislama, so metropolitan languages are again of limited value. Thosewho proceed tosecondary level attendone ofarestrictednumber of English- orFrench-medium institutions,most of whichrequire studentsto board outsidetheir homecommunities. At such schools, there areusually only limited possibilitiesfor students to keep in regular contactwith their familiesexcept during schoolholidays. There isselection of students again for admission from junior secondaryto seniorsecondary education, and only 15%of thoseeligible areaccepted for further study(Masing, 1992: 24). There isonce again a choice between English- and French-medium upper secondary schools. Students attendingEnglish- orFrench-medium secondaryschools are required totake the otherlanguage asasubject up tillYear 10. For Years 11– 13, the other language becomesan elective subject. There isstrong interest in French among studentsat the mainEnglish-medium schools,though interestin English among studentsat French-medium schoolsis considerably higher. Nootherlanguages aretaught as subjects atsecondaryschools in the countryat which the enrolment 19

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 is predominantly Ni-Vanuatu. The roleof the twometropolitan languages within the countrybecame amajor politicalissue in the run-up toindependence in the late1970s, and the issuehas boiled overin public anumber oftimessince then. In fact,it isarguably the rela- tiveposition of English andFrench –ratherthan the statusof Bislamaor anyof the localvernaculars – thatrepresents the only majorlinguistic issueto havebeen seriously addressed in public in the last twenty years. The largeststreet demonstrations that Vanuatu has ever seen were by French-educated people andtheir supportersprotesting in the late1970s at perceived threatsto French-medium educationfrom the predominantly English-educated VanuaakuPati government that was in powerin Vanuatu 84 Current Issues in Language Planning

before independence. The Britishand the French hadfor decades been playing Ni-Vanuatu off againsteach other, and had successfully divided people into opposing ‘anglophone’and ‘ francophone’sides. In the wordsof the firstMinister of Education in independent Vanuatu, this political posturing: ...hasaffected the historic,political, social and economic progress of this countryand has provided the mainbasis of divisionbetween the Melane- sians,by creatingthem either ‘Anglophone’or ‘Francophone’. (These terms aremostly used by thosewhose aim has been todivide andrule andto disruptour unity andprogress towards independence.) (Kalpokas,1980: 240–41) There isa commonmyth outside Vanuatu that the countryis, or used to be, divided up intodiscrete ‘ anglophone’and ‘ francophone’areas (e.g. Watson-Gegeo,1987: 30). This was never so,and it is not so today. It is quite commonto find bothFrench-medium andEnglish-medium schoolsin very close proximityto eachother, not infrequently even withinthe samevillage, and some familieseven havesome of their children going toEnglish-medium schoolsand othersgoing toFrench-medium schools.In fact,since independence, anumber of schoolshave been convertedto ‘ bilingual’schools, in the sense thatstudents following the samecurriculum materialstake their classesin either English or French depending on which stream they belong in. Since independence, however,there havebeen very significantshifts in the enrolmentfigures forEnglish-medium andFrench-medium schools.There has been agradual,but consistentshift in primaryenrolments, from figures which slightly favouredFrench-medium atindependence, toa nearly two-thirds majorityfor English-medium withinseven years(Crowley, 1989b: 41). By 1998, the proportionof English-medium enrolmentshad increased to over three quar- ters,despite anumber ofyears of governmentby acoalitionthat was dominated by apartywhich actively promoted French-medium educationto counteractthe very obvious erosion to English-medium schools. Thisconsistent drift from French- toEnglish-medium educationhas been of considerableconcern to some.During the period 1991–95 acoalitionof parties dominatedby politicianswith strong francophone sentiments was in powerat the nationallevel. However,while thisgovernment conducted a certainamount ofgrandstandingabout this issue in parliamentarydebate andchanged signage in somegovernment offices, few seriousefforts were madeto promote official equity in usage between English andFrench bothas languagesof educationor as

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 languagesof government,as awayofcounteractingthe driftover the preceding yearstowards English. 20 The ombudsman’s annualreports on multilingualism forthe period 1995–97 placed specialemphasis on the need tomaintain official equality between the twolanguages, and some specific recommendationsin this regard were proposed (Office of the Ombudsman, 1995, 1996, 1997). However,the francophone-dominatedgovernment has since been replaced witha seriesof governments that have been dominatedagain by English- educatedpeople, andthe previous ombudsmanhas recently been succeeded by someonewhose particular linguistic concernsat this stage are not known – except thathe ishimself English-educated, in contrastto the previousombuds- man–asnonew annualreports on multilingualismhave yet been presented. My The Language Situation in Vanuatu 85

suspicionis that for as long asgovernmentsare politically fluid, Vanuatuwill remaindominated by anglophones,or where compromisesbetween anglophones andfrancophones have to be made,there will be lessdirect pressure to maintainequity between English andFrench, withpeople being given greater freedom tomaketheir ownchoicesbetween the twolanguages,as advocatedby Early(1999). Given the greateraccessibility of tertiary education through the medium ofEnglish,as well asthe dominanceof anglophone capitalin the econ- omyof PortVila, such a laissez-faire attitudewill probably resultin afurther drift away from French. Attitudestowards the use oflanguagesother than the relevantmetropolitan language in secondaryschool classrooms vary somewhat. Anne Naupa (personalcommunication) reports that there isfar less acceptance of the use of anyBislama in classin French-medium schoolsthan in English-medium schools. However,even in English-medium schools,there isvariation from school to schoolas tothe extent ofacceptabilityof Bislama,with some schools prohibiting the language andothers permitting it,though atthe sametime providing encour- agement forthe use ofEnglish.Even withinthe sameschool, different teachers followdifferent practices,with some teachers opting never touse Bislamain the classroom,while otherssupplement the English contentwith substantial amounts of discussion in Bislama. Successful secondarystudents in Vanuatucan, of course,proceed totertiary education.There arenow increasingly variedopportunities available through the PortVila (Emalus)campus of the Universityof the South Pacific(as well as the Luganville andTanna university sub-centres), while substantialnumbers of otherstudents travel overseas to study at the Universityof the South Pacific campusin Suva in Fiji orat the Alafuacampus in Samoa.Others attend the Universityof Papua New Guinea in PortMoresby orthe PapuaNew Guinea Universityof Technology in Lae,while smallernumbers attenduniversities or other tertiary institutions in Australia and New Zealand. These institutionsobviously all teach through the medium of English. French-medium tertiaryeducation is available from the Universitéde la Nouvelle Calédonie in Nouméa, the UniversitéFranç aise de laPolyné sie in Tahitior atuniversitiesin metropolitanFrance. Very few Ni-Vanuatu actually achieve successin studiesat these institutions,and most francophoneuniversity graduateshave made the sometimesdifficult switchto English asamedium of instructionand attended the sameinstitutions favoured by their anglophone counterparts.However, it was reported in 1999that a French-medium tertiary

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 centre isto be establishedin Vanuatuunder the auspicesof the Agence Universitairede laFrancophonie. Given the expense ofrunning the anglophone Universityof the South Pacific,of whichVanuatu is a financiallycontributing member nation,it is difficult toimagine suchan institutionbeing viable in the long termgiven the very smallpotential clientele unless itreceives substantial ongoing foreign – most likely French, or possibly Canadian – aid. Although Bislamahas no recognised role in the primaryand secondary educationsystems of the countryand students are often penalised foreven speaking the language informallyon schoolgrounds, the samekinds ofrestric- tionsobviously do not apply when studentsbegin their tertiarystudies, as people areassumed to be entitled tomake their ownpersonalchoices as towhat 86 Current Issues in Language Planning

languagesthey speak.The PacificLanguages Unit of the Universityof the South Pacificwas established in Vanuatuin 1983,and one ofthe objectives ofthisunit wasto raisethe statusof Pacificlanguages in the eyes ofthe people whospeak these languages. One wayof doing thiswas to offer auniversity creditcourse on, and in, Bislama.Doing thiswould serve tomake people awarethat the language hasa clearlydefinable linguisticidentity ofitsown. Moreover, offering asubject that wasboth taught and examined exclusively throughthe medium ofBislama wouldmake people awarethat serious academic study at tertiarylevel couldbe carriedout through a language which,until notmuch morethan twenty years earlier,was regarded largely asalanguage ofpoorlyeducated plantation workers. Accordingly,in 1985,Pastor Bill Camdenand Terry Crowleyjointly taught sucha courseas an intensive summerschool offering. Thiscourse attracted an enrolmentof twenty students, many of whomwere full-time studentsfrom the Suva campuspicking up additionalcredits towards their degrees during their summerholidays. By 1987,this course had been developed asa complete exter- nally taughtcourse, which wasmade available to studentsas partof the Certifi- catein PacificLanguage Studies thatwas offered by the Universityof the South Pacific. The printed coursematerials consisted of a two-volumestudy guide ( Kos Buk 1 (CourseBook 1) and Kos Buk 2 (CourseBook 2)) amountingto over 550 pages in total,a setof supplementary readings( Bukblong Ridim (Reader)) ofabout140 pages,and a reference grammarof the language, writtenin Bislamaitself. This wasentitled Grama blongBislama (Grammarof Bislama)and it ranto about240 pages.The coursecovered four mainareas, each of whichdealt with a number of particular topics. The general breakdown of the course, then, was as follows: (1) Thenature andhistory of Bislama as a language :pidgin andcreole languages, pidgin andcreole genesis, pre-plantationand plantation language contact involving Ni-Vanuatu, and other Pacific pidgins and creoles. (2) Thecurrent status anduse ofBislama :constitutionaland social position of Bislama,geographical and socialvarieties of Bislama,the questionof standardisation. (3) Thephonology and lexicon of Bislama :the natureof phonemic contrasts, phonologicalvariation in the formsof words,principles andproblems in Bislamaspelling, adaptationof foreign wordsinto Bislama phonology, ways of expanding the lexicon of Bislama. Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 (4) Bislamagrammar :wordclasses, morphology, noun phraseand verb phrase structure, prepositional phrases, complex sentences. The varioustopics in the firstof the four partsof thiscourse were chosenbecause itwas felt thatit wasessentialto give studentsan appreciationof boththe special natureof Bislamaas apidgin/creole language, andat the sametime, to make studentsaware that the language hasthe samekind ofpotential as any other language. The secondsection was included in orderto make students critically examine someofthe attitudesthey hadacquired about Bislama through their primaryand secondaryeducation. The thirdsection was designed tomake people realisethat The Language Situation in Vanuatu 87

the incorporationof the new wordsinto the lexiconis natural, but thatpeople whodo not speak English (orFrench) donot necessarily understand words borrowedfrom English (orFrench) onan ad hoc basis.This section of the course alsoaimed to make people awarethat the kind ofrandomspelling inBislamathat is so frequently found in the public domain is neither desirable nor helpful. The final sectionof the coursewas included notbecause itwas thought that studentshave a burning urge tolearnabout the internalstructure of the Bislama noun phraseor other such technical aspects of the language, but because thisis the kind oftopic that students sometimes find difficult. Including difficult materialin the coursewas not something that was done tosatisfy any perverse needs onthe partof the coursecoordinator, but tomake students realise that the language itself hasa complex(and clearly non-English) structureof its own, and thattechnically difficult materialcould be discussedthrough the medium ofthis one-time plantation language. Apartfrom when the coursewas offered initiallyas asummercourse, there havenot been largeenrolments. Under currentarrangements in the Pacific LanguagesUnit, this course is no longer offered, asthe originalCertificate in PacificLanguage Studies, ofwhichthis course was a component,is nolonger available.However, the morerecent full majorin PacificVernacular Studies may well include amodified versionof this course in the future (Lynch, personal communication). There isalso a strongcase to be madefor finding someplace forincorporating Bislamainto the formaleducation system as asubject atupper secondarylevel. Students atthislevel arethe people whoare most likely tobe communicatingin Bislamain itsspoken –and,more importantly, written – formwith the wider public. Given the lackof adherence tostandardised spellings andnorms of expressionin the mediaand many other contexts in whichBislama is used,it couldbe argued thatsuch skills could be passedon in aclassroomcontext. The mainissues that face usersof Bislamaare (1) the temptationto incorporate material on an ad hoc basisfrom English (and,much lessfrequently, French), whichis anespecially strongtendency in translationfrom English toBislama;and (2) a lackof awareness of standardised spellings thathave been agreed on,as reflected in the published dictionary(Crowley, 1995b) and the recently produced translation of the Bible. The difficulty thatstudents face in distinguishing between English and Bislamacould be overcomeby explicit instructionin Bislamaspelling, transla- tionand expression once they haveacquired a high level ofcommandof English

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 atthe upper secondarylevel. Such skillscould be passedon aspartof ageneral subject thatmight be called‘ CommunicationSkills’ . Such asubject couldprovide regular exercisesin translationinto and out of Bislama,Bislama spelling, creative writingin Bislama,and the editing ofpreviously writtenBislama materials. However,there areother topics that might profitably be included, suchas intercultural communication and public speaking.

Objectives of language education The use ofEnglish orFrench asmediaof instructionis primarily instrumental in the sense thatthe languagesare being taughtso as toenable people tolearn essentialcontent material elsewhere in the curriculum,and to enable studentsto 88 Current Issues in Language Planning

proceed tothe next level ofeducation.Ni-Vanuatu by andlarge do not use these languagesconversationally with each other outside of the educationalcontext. Thisis firstly because the choiceof English orFrench canoften be seen asbeing politicallydivisive, especially when Bislamais readily availableas a politically neutrallanguage choice.Secondly, the proportionof the populationwhich is sufficiently fluent in either language tocarry out a successfulconversation is relatively small. Itmust be assumed,therefore, thatthe primaryobjective ofteaching people English orFrench isto provide themwith access to higher-level educationin that language, andnot to produce English- orFrench-speaking élitesin the towns.At the sametime, however, students’ ability in the metropolitanlanguages clearly hasto be morethan purely passive,as many upper secondarystudents end up being employed in situationswhere somekind ofactive command is called for in their dealings with expatriate workers or customers. Although there isa dual-language educationsystem in operationin Vanuatu, itshould be pointed outthat there isa requirement forupper secondarystudents in English- andFrench-medium schoolsto takethe otherlanguage asasubject. Thatis, anglophone studentsmust study some French, while francophone studentsmust study some English up toYear 10. The thinking behind thispolicy ispresumably thatall people ofaparticularlevel ofeducation should be atleast able toread and understand (if notspeak tosome extent) the othermetropolitan officiallanguage ofthe country,given thatsometimes documents in justone language are in circulation. Iknownothing at all about what sorts of assessment procedures arein place forensuring thatthese objectives aremet. In fact,my strongsuspicion is that the policy outlined in the preceding paragraphis only partlysuccessful in anycase. Given the wayin whichEnglish-medium educationhas come to dominate in the educationsystem of Vanuatu,francophones do notgenerally takea greatdeal of convincingthat it is in their intereststo learn some English, and substantial numbers become reasonablycompetent in the language. Anglophone secondary students,however, tend tobe particularlyresistant to the ideaof learning French, and relatively few achieve any degree of fluency. 21 Iamnot aware of any discussion having been conductedin the country concerning the particularvarieties of English andFrench thatthe education systemof Vanuatushould aim to promote.Teachers of English andFrench at primarylevel arealmost exclusively secondlanguage Ni-Vanuatu speakersof the languages,so the modelsthat children areexposed toare certainly not

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 native-speaker modelsby anystretch of the imagination.For the mostpart, children donot come into any significant contact with native speakers of English or French until secondarylevel, andit is really only in seniorsecondary schools where nativespeaker modelsare at allinfluential. By thisstage, children will obviouslyhave already acquired fairly fixed patternsof pronunciation,gram- marand lexical usage fromexposure overmany years to non-native speaker models. One interesting questionthat is worth considering at thispoint is the extent to which adistinctVanuatu ‘ dialect’of English hasemerged amongEnglish- educatedNi-Vanuatu, as well asthe relatedquestion of whether adistinctlocal varietyof French hasemerged aswell. In PapuaNew Guinea,a recognisable The Language Situation in Vanuatu 89

PapuaNew Guinea setof idiomaticexpressions, and even somephonological andgrammatical norms, have emerged in English asthe language hascome to expressa distinctPapua New Guinean identity amongthe educatedé lite (Smith, 1988).In Vanuatuhowever, English isso rarely used in itsspoken formeven amongthe besteducated Ni-Vanuatu thatit would be difficult torecognise any systematicfeatures that one wouldwant to ascribe to a Vanuatudialect of English. One relatedobservation that is frequently madeis that the French of French-educated Ni-Vanuatu much moreclosely approximates to the standard ofspoken metropolitanFrench. Ni-Vanuatu whospeak English,by wayof contrast,are much morelikely tocarry some kind oflocalaccent, and also, it has been argued,to speak withless fluency. Assumingthat these observationsare correct– andit must be recognisedthat these arefor the mostpart purely impres- sionisticobservations that have not been subject torigorousempirical verifica- tion– the mostcommonly suspected explanationfor this is to claiminterference from Bislama in the case of English speakers. However,this suggestion has never been proved,and it needs tobe kept in mindthat the pre-independence French educationsystem much morestrongly valued linguisticuniformity thanwas ever the casein the English-speaking world.It is noteworthy that dialect differentiation amongthe besteducated speakersof French in Franceis almost non-existent, 22 whereasit isquite unre- markablefor well-educated speakersof English tohavemarked Australian, New Zealand or a variety of British or American accents (along with many others). In anycase, the pre-independence Britisheducation system was more closely adaptedto the localsituation than was ever the casewith the morerigidly centralisedFrench system.The French-medium educationsystem in itsoverseas territorieshas also been described asbeing specifically aimedat producing évolués whowould speak, act and think like metropolitanFrench people. This systemwas successful to the extentthat French-educated Ni-Vanuatu today speak toeach other in French in informalsituations much morereadily than English-educated Ni-Vanuatu speak toeachother in English.I haveon anumber ofoccasions observed some well-educated francophoneNi-Vanuatu speaking to eachother in French in local‘ kavabars’ , while Idonotremember ever having encountered the same kind of behaviour between anglophone Ni-Vanuatu. 23

Languages in the media Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 In acountrysuch as Vanuatu where transportis difficult andelectricity supplies arefor the mostpart restricted to the twotowns where fewer than20% ofNi-Vanuatu live, the mediaare far less intrusive than is the casein manyother countries.Newspapers are by andlarge only easilyaccessible to people in the towns,and television broadcasts are also similarly restricted in their reception. Radiois the only medium whichreaches the entire populationof the country acrossall language groups,and which crossesthe urban-ruraldivide in society. Becausethe language choicesand issues of public access,as well ashistorical developments,are somewhat different foreach of these media,I will discuss each medium separately. 90 Current Issues in Language Planning

Radio The firstradio broadcasts in Vanuatuwere in the 1960s.These programmes were beamed initiallyin English,French andBislamafrom a governmentstation. Bislamarapidly cameto dominate the airwaves,with English andFrench being reduced tosecondarystatus, simply because sofew people understoodEnglish or French and so many understood Bislama. In the early1970s the amountof airtimeover what was then knownas Radio Vila wasincreased significantly, and the powerof the transmitterswas also boosted,enabling amuch largerrural proportion of the populationto receive the short-wavebroadcasts. This period represented the run-up toindependence, andthe radiowas used todisseminatecompeting politicalideas. Bislama rapidly became the dominantmedium forthe expressionof these ideas,due toitspoliti- callyneutral position vis-à -vis English andFrench. After independence, the radiostation was renamed Radio Vanuatu in recognitionof the vitalnational function thatwas played by the radioin keeping people informed aboutrecent developments.However, when Vanuatubecame independent, the government retaineddirect control over the radiostation, a factwhich hasprompted repeated, often quite justified, claimsthat the governmentof the daywas using itspower torestrict people’ s accessto competing interpretationsof the day’s events. Shortwave radiobroadcasts from Radio Vanuatu can be received allover the country,and even in ruralareas where there isoften littlespare cash, one ofthe firstthings that people chooseto buy when they havesome money isa battery-operatedradio. Many people arelargely relianton Bislamaradio broad- castsfor national and international news and reports of shipping movements, andpeople listento the radiofor the manypublic educationprogrammes that are regularly broadcast.The radioalso broadcasts paid ‘ servicemessages’ every day, allowingpeople topass personal messages over the radiowhere there isno accessto telephones orteleradio. 24 The plea eniman iharemmesej ya, plis pasem i go long X ‘anybody hearing thismessage should please convey itto X’isregularly heardat the end ofthese messages,as it is recognised that somebody may have temporarilyrun outof money tobuy new batteries,their radiomay havebroken down, or they may be otherwise prevented from hearing their message. RadioVanuatu broadcasts about 80% of the timein Bislama.The remaining timeis devoted equally toprogramming in English andFrench. Much ofthe programmingin metropolitanlanguages involves material rebroadcast from overseasstations, such as news programmes from Radio Australia or Radio

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 FranceInternational, or old BBC panel games,and the intended audience appearsto be expatriatesliving in the country,rather than Ni-Vanuatu. Very few locally produced programmes are broadcast in English or French. RadioVanuatu has never madeany attempt to present programmesin anyof the locallanguages. The lackof vernacularbroadcasts has never been apublic issue,as people presumably recognise thatit would be impossibleto broadcastin 80languagesover a single radiostation (and that to establish 80 different radio stationswould be completely impractical).There hasonly been one situationof which Iamawarewhen vernacularswere used in broadcastradio, and this did notinvolve Radio Vanuatu. At the timethat Vanuatu gained itsindependence in 1980,there wasa short-livedrebellion basedon the islandof Espiritu Santo The Language Situation in Vanuatu 91

whichinvolved a failed attemptto set up anindependent stateknown as the VemaranaRepublic. The maincentre forthis political resistance was the small settlementof Vanafo, which was located in the interiorof Espiritu Santo. This communityconsisted of asignificantnumber ofsettlersfrom other islands, and they attemptedto communicate with their supportersand opponentsat the time ofthe attemptedinsurrection by establishinga radiotransmitter and broadcasting in Bislama,as well asin someof the mainvernaculars of settlers in Luganville, such as Paamese. The avoidanceof vernacularsover Radio Vanuatu is not complete, however, assomethingof anexception ismade for the broadcastof localmusic, whether thisis recreational or religious innature.Vernacular songs played overthe radio canbecome popular nationwideeven where allbut afew per centof the popula- tionknow the meaning ofthe wordsbecause they aresung in somelocal language. (People aresometimes known to come up withtheir ownlocal vernac- ularwords to a widely played songin anunfamiliarlanguage. These wordsmay be quite different in meaning tothe wordsin the originalsong but they allow people from other islands to enjoy the song as well.) The language in whichan announceris speaking will therefore notallow an accurateprediction to be madeabout the language ofthe songsthat (s)he may broadcast.In aprogrammethat is presented inBislama,the musicthat is played maybe in avarietyof languages. The popular WokbaotRikwes (‘Mobile Request’) programme,for example, while presented in Bislama,plays songs in whatever language ischosenby the personbeing interviewed, whether thatbe Bislama, English, French, alocallanguage, orpossibly even Caribbean French Creole. Similarly,the presenter ofan English-medium request programmemay play someFrench songs,while French-speaking announcersfrequently broadcast songs in English. In the early1990s, a secondlocal radio station was established. Known as FM98,it broadcastson the FMband,rather than the medium andshort wave bandsof Radio Vanuatu. This station can only be picked upcloseto maincentres, andis obviously aimed at people whoare wealthy enough toown stereo receiving equipment. The choiceof programming,as well aslanguage choices,on the FMstationis quite different towhatis broadcast over the AMandshort wave frequencies. There isa greateremphasis on whatappeals to ayounger andmore moniedlistening audience. Advertisementsare more noticeable, and there isless attentionpaid to the public educationaspects of broadcasting than we find onthe AM and short wave service.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Significantly, the dominantlanguages of the FMservicewere originally English andFrench in pretty well equal quantities,with Ni-Vanuatu announcers attempting– often notterribly successfully –toimitate the non-stoppatter of commercialradio announcers overseas. However, it appears that lately, there hasbeen anincreasing tendency touse Bislama.The FMstationtends to avoid playing localvernacular songs, though the announcersseem tobe happy toplay Fijian andTahitian hits. It seems that as long asa songis from overseas, it is consideredsuitably sophisticated to be played onthe FMband,even though the numbers of speakers of Fijian and Tahitian living in Vanuatu are tiny. 92 Current Issues in Language Planning

Newspapers When the firstradio broadcasts were madein the 1960s,the French adminis- trationin Vanuatuwas particularlykeen tosee itspolitical influence extended to agreaterproportion of the population.They setabout establishing institutions of governmentin directcompetition with the Britishin anattempt to drum up support.One ofthe strategiesadopted by the French Residency tobring this aboutwas to begin issuing anewsletterin 1961entitled Bulletind’ Information de la Résidence de France (‘French Residency InformationBulletin’ ). Thiswas initially written mainly in French, though it contained some material in Bislama. Thisjockeying forinfluence between the twocolonialpowers coincided with – orperhaps even directlyfostered – the development ofa consciouspolitical awarenessamong a number ofEnglish-educated Ni-Vanuatu whoestablished the firstpolitical party in the condominium,the New Hebrides CulturalAssocia- tion.This was followed shortly afterwards by the establishmentof acompeting movementthat aimed to attract predominantly francophone support. This was the beginning ofthe anglophone-francophone divide in Vanuatupolitics that has been a recurring theme up to the present. These politicalorganisations both produced newslettersto provide informa- tionprimarily to the rapidly growingurban population(Van Trease,1995: 21). The ruralpopulation was largely excluded, asit very often tooktoo long for newslettersto reachoutlying areas,by whichtime the newswas often stale.The mostinfluential ofthese newsletterswas New HebridesViewpoints issuedby the largely anglophone New Hebrides NationalParty (formerly the New Hebrides CulturalAssociation). Although the French governmenthad been producing a newslettersince 1961,the Britishwere much slowerto act,and it was only in 1972 thatthey began issuing their own BritishNewsletter ,in directresponse to indige- nouspolitical groups which had begun producing their parties’newsletters. So, by the early1970s, there were Britishand French governmentnewsletters, as well asa varietyof newslettersissued by new politicalparties, all making use of Bislama,along with one ofthe twometropolitan languages, depending on whether the publishers saw themselves as anglophones or francophones. Priorto the 1960sand early 1970s and this flurry ofpoliticalactivity conducted throughthese new mediaoutlets, Bislama had been seen by Ni-Vanuatu largely asalanguage ofrural plantation labourers. Those who made the choiceto leave their villagesto workon plantationswere often seen astroublemakers,leaving to escape fromvillage authorities.Since speakersof Bislamain earlier timeswere often seen asundesirable types,the language thatthey spoke continued tobe

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 associatedwith the samenegative attitudesthat had characterised it since itfirst spreadaround Vanuatu as aresultof the Queensland plantationtrade in the late 1800s.It was seen asalanguage thatbelonged nowhere, asexemplified by the descriptionof the language by one personas lanwisblong rod ‘language ofthe road’, withuncomplimentary comparison being madewith the expression pikininiblong rod ‘illegitimatechild (”child ofthe road”)’ (Charpentier, 1979:133). Withthis description, Bislama was being described implicitly asa ‘bastard language’. However,the development ofan urban economywith the expansionof tour- ismand the establishmentof ataxhaven forinternational businesses led tothe creationof more prestigious non-plantation jobs that required someformal The Language Situation in Vanuatu 93

schooling.This, coupled withthe riseof nationalistpolitics, saw Bislama move intodomains that it had not previously occupied. Itbecame the one andonly language thatcould appeal tothe entire urban population,whether educatedor not,whether schooledin French orEnglish,and whether manuallabourers or skilled employees. Bislamachanged very rapidly frombeing the language of thosewho some hadthoughtto be enslavedin the past,to the language ofthose who sought to be free in the future. When the French Residency issuedits first newsletter in 1961,its writers had very littlein the wayof orthographictradition in Bislamato fall backon, as Bislamahad until then notbeen used in writtenform in public atall.One might haveexpected these francophonewriters to adopt a setof gallicisedspelling conventionsfollowed by earlier francophonewriters such as Pè re Pionnier. While there iscertainly some evidence of gallicisedspellings in their written materials,there is,in fact,much greaterevidence ofinfluence fromEnglish. However,there wasalsoa clearattempt to spell wordsin somekind ofaphono- logicallybased rather than a purely anglocentricetymologically based spelling system.Since the inspirationfrom this cannot have come from any pre-existing traditionin Vanuatu,the writersof such materials were presumably takingas their majormodel either the spelling conventionswidely followedin vernacular languagesin Vanuatu,or the spelling systemof Tok Pisin in PapuaNew Guinea, whichwas already fairly well establishedby thatstage (though the extent to which people were aware of this in Vanuatu is not known). The earlycolonial government newsletters evolved laterinto the British government’s Tamtam (‘drum’ ) andthe French government’s Nabanga (‘banyan tree’). The choiceof Bislama names for these newspapersrather than names in English andFrench reflected amovetowards the expressionof agreaterlocal viewpoint,but the Britishnewspaper continued topublish bilingually in English andBislama, while the French newspaper published bilingually in French and Bislama.After independence, asingle Vanuatugovernment weekly newspaper wasestablished, and this continues to publish as Vanuatu Weekly/Hebdomadaire , with material in English, French and Bislama. Forthe firstfew yearsof independence, thiswas the only regular newspaper. The contentwas fairly tightly controlledby whatevergovernment held power– in much the sameway thatthe radiohas been under tightgovernment control – andthere havebeen regular complaintsabout a lackof pressfreedom. In the early1980s, an independent newspaper wasestablished but itdid notlast long, asthe foreign editorwas deported forpublishing materialthat the government

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 of the time disagreed with. In 1994, the TradingPost began operationas a much moresuccessful – and daring– privatelyowned newspaper. Itsmajor news items and editorial commentare entirely in English.Letters to the editorare in English orBislama, depending onthe choiceof the letterwriter. There isalso a popular gossip columnentitled Miharem se ... ‘Ihearthat . ..’,in whichshort items of gossipare printed either in English orvery colloquialBislama. Even itemsthat are printed in English often havejocular interjections in the latestBislama slang, and items in Bislamaare sometimes sarcastically heavily laden withEnglish when senior people aredescribed asbehaving in particularlycrass ways, such as in the following ( Trading Post 490, 16 October 1999): 94 Current Issues in Language Planning

Mi haremse wan senior secretary long dioceseof Vanuatu we hem i directlyinvolved wetem official matters to the bishop hem igivim pikinini long haos gel blong hem blong Torba. 25 Otherwise,the only Bislamacontent in the TradingPost consistsof itemsof local sportsnew onthe backpage, aswell asafour page insertsummarising recent worldand local news stories on whatis intended tobe aweekly basis.However, latein 1999the newspaper conducteda readersurvey, and the wordingof some ofthe questionssuggests that the editorwas considering providing morenews coverage in Bislama if that was what readers said they wanted. Anothernewspaper, knownas Nasara (‘public discussionarea’ ) wasalso establishedin 1998.This also appeared initiallymostly in English andBislama, though witha greateramount of regular Bislamacontent than we find in the TradingPost .More recently, there hasalso been somenews in French aswell. However,there were reportsin late1999 that this newspaper wasabout to loseits financial backing. Television Television broadcastingin Vanuatuonly began in 1992when TV blong Vanuatu (‘Television ofVanuatu’) wasestablished.Given thatthe signalcan only be received in the urban areasand a very restrictedrange ofruralcentres, and alsogiven thatthe receiving equipment ismuch moreexpensive thanradio sets, televisionbroadcasts are clearly aimed primarily at awealthierurban audience. There isvery littlelocal content broadcast over the televisionbecause ofthe cost involvedin producing programmes,though there isadaily(on weekdays only) nationalnews broadcast in Bislama,and short music clips of local bands performing in arange oflanguages: Bislama, local vernaculars, English or French. Otherprogramming is organised to give equal emphasisto materialin English andFrench, withall-English andall-French programmingon every other day.26 Satellite disheshave also sprouted up allover Vila. So far,those who have installedthese disheshave largely been relativelywealthy expatriates and local Chinese business operatorswho prefer tohave a wider range ofprogramming thanthat offered by TVblongVanuatu ,aswell asbroadcasts24 hours a dayrather thanthe limitedhours offered by the localstation. Of course,such broadcasts are entirely in English,French, Mandarinor Cantonese, and the contentis completely non-local. Relatedto the questionof broadcasttelevision is the accessthat people in

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Vanuatuhave to videocassette recorders. While televisionbroadcasts cannot be received in mostouter island locations, it is not uncommon for television screens tobe used inruralareas to showvideocassettes (and VCRs are very commonin urban areasas well). Even where there isno main electricity supply, people often buy generatorsspecifically sothatthey andtheir family andfriends canwatch programmeson video. Such showingsare sometimes for educational or religious purposes,though localentrepreneurs often organisevideo evenings purely for people’s entertainment,for which asmallentrance fee ischarged, and video nights in rural areas often attract large audiences. Asmight be expected, the amountof locally produced materialthat is seen on suchoccasions is extremely limited,with most people therefore watchingvideos The Language Situation in Vanuatu 95

in English orFrench only,and there isno attempt to provide subtitling or dubbing in Bislama.However, people areoften notable toclearlyhear the sound when in alarge audience in avenue thatis typically not acoustically ideal (and withan electricitygenerator humming in the background).In fact,it is often not alwaysnecessary to be able tofollow a greatdeal of the dialogue asthe most popular showsare action movies with lots of fighting andshooting. Such movies allowpeople tomakeup their ownstory-line as they go,and I haveeven heard people producing their ownimaginary, but entirely plausible, dialogue forthe benefit of the friends with whom they are sharing the movie.

Advertising and public awareness Ihaveincluded advertisingas a separateheading asthisis worthy of discus- sionindependently ofthe variousmedia. Not surprisingly, vernacularsplay no rolein advertisingin the countrygiven the numbers oflanguagesinvolved, so thisdiscussion focuses on the relationshipbetween Bislama,English andFrench in the contextof advertising. Closely related to advertisingis the promotionof public awarenesson particular issues. While the twoaresimilarin thatbroadcast mediaor written public noticesand posters are used topresent messagesto the public, they differ in thatadvertisements aim to persuade people topurchase a product,while awarenessprogrammes simply aimto educate people about public issues. Public awarenessbroadcasts, newspaper itemsand posters are almost invariably presented in Bislama.Radio slots in the pasthave promoted issues as varied asroadsafety to children ( Lukluklong lef, lukluk long raet, lukluklong lef bakegen ‘Lookto the left, lookto the right,and look to the left again’) andbreast feeding overbottle feeding tomothers( Tatabotel, titi hem i nambawan ‘Goodbyebottle, breastsare best’ ). Politicalcampaigns are also conducted almost exclusively in Bislama27 when the audience islinguistically mixed, though candidatesspeaking toaudiences withintheir ownlanguage areawill normallycampaign in the vernacular.There isalso some limited public awarenessthat is conducted in ruralareas through the medium oflocallanguages. The ForestryDepartment, for example, hasproduced limited numbers ofposters in somelocal languages promoting sensible forest management programmes. Advertisingon radio for commercial products and services makes much greateruse ofEnglish andFrench, though Bislamais also used tosomeextent. Television advertisingis similar to radioadvertising, though advertisementsin metropolitanlanguages are usually takenfrom overseas sources, mostly being

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 advertisementsin English fromAustralia, Fiji andPapua New Guinea.Some locallyproduced televisionadvertisements are made in Bislama.There islittle advertisingin French, andeven ondesignatedFrench broadcastdays, advertisements still appear overwhelmingly in English. There isa tendency forwritten advertisements to appear in ametropolitan language while advertisingover the radiois more likely tobe in Bislama. However,products that are primarily aimed at local buyers ratherthan also being aimedat the wealthierurban expatriateminority are more likely tobe advertisedin print in Bislama.The newspapersproduce printed advertisements in English,French orBislama, according to the choiceof the advertiser.Most commercialadvertisements are in English, though someare in French, while 96 Current Issues in Language Planning

public noticesand lost-and-found advertisements can be found in allthree languages,depending onthe choiceof the personwho places the advertisement.

Literary writing Finally, Iproposeto discussbriefly the linguisticchoices that are encountered in creativewriting produced by Ni-Vanuatu.Only avery smallnumber ofliter- arywritersin the South Pacifichave achieved anydegree ofinternationalrecog- nition,and this recognition has for the mostpart been achieved throughthe medium ofametropolitanlanguage, suchas Albert Wendt’s successwith his novels relating to the experiences of Samoans. In Vanuatu,I knowof nonovel thathas been authoredby anyNi-Vanuatu writer,in anylanguage. Literarywriting among Ni-Vanuatu hasfor the most partinvolved short poems in free verse,which appear in awide range of published outlets,e.g. the localnewspapers, school magazines, or collectionsof poemspublished either by the authorsthemselves or by the Universityof the South Pacific.It is generally morehighly educatedpeople whoproduce such works,and there isa strongtendency forpeople towrite in either English or French. While itis certainly not unknown forpeople tocompose poems in Bislama,I havenever encountered anycreatively written poetry in alocal language. However,it would not be fairto say that local languages are never used for creativewritten literary purposes, as young people frequently composenew songsto be sung by local‘ stringband’groups in their locallanguages. Some such songsare composed exclusively in the locallanguage andare intended purely for localconsumption. However, some of the better organisedmusical groups put outcassettes and compactdisks for a nationalmarket, with a mixof songsin the locallanguage, Bislamaand a metropolitanlanguage, andsometimes with more than one language being used within a single number.

Immigrant languages Vanuatuis a smallcountry with few resources,which has not made it a target forimmigrants. According to the 1989census results, the non-citizenpopulation constitutedonly 2.4%of the total.Most of thisnumber wasmadeup ofpeople on temporaryvisas, either short-termtourists or employees onthree-year renewable workcontracts as civilservants. Some arealso non-citizens operating busi- nessesin the country,but they arepresent in the countryonly onthe basisof

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 renewable residence permits.Foreigners canonly apply forcitizenship after a period of ten yearsof uninterrupted residence. Assuccessful applicants are required torelinquish anyother passports that they hold,there areonly very smallnumbers ofexpatriates who opt to take up Vanuatucitizenship and become permanent resident immigrants. There isno special linguistic provisionmade for the severalthousand long-term foreign residentsin Vanuatu.Given the statusof English andFrench in the country,it is common for such people toassumethat a knowledge ofeither language will be sufficient toallow them to successfully carryout their duties, andvery often thisconfidence isjustified. Itis extremely rarefor any expatriate (except perhaps forthe occasionalmissionary or a linguistic oranthropological The Language Situation in Vanuatu 97

fieldworker) tolearnanything ofalocalVanuatu language otherthan perhaps a few common greetings. Itis much morecommon for expatriates to make an effort tolearnBislama – indeed, forsome jobs such a knowledge isindispensable –but the government providesno training in the language. Some non-government organisations(e.g. Peace Corpsor othervolunteer agencies) andseveral of the diplomaticmissions offoreign governmentsrequire new expatriateappointees toundergo trainingin Bislamaand they regularly organiseshort introductory courses in the language. Otherindividuals usually havethe opportunityto attend courses that are mountedfrom time to time by the Universityof the South Pacific’s PortVila campus. There havebeen somelonger-term immigrantcommunities whose language isneither English norFrench. There havebeen Vietnamese people residentin Vanuatuin smallnumbers since people were recruited initiallyas plantation labourersin the 1920sand 1930s. Most were eventually repatriatedto Vietnamin the 1960s,but asmallcommunity remained in Vanuatuwhere they ended up running businesses in PortVila andLuganville. By andlarge, the younger gener- ationsof Vietnamese havebeen incorporatedinto the localfrancophone education system and have become first-language French speakers. There isalso a smallcommunity of Chinese immigrants,again often running smallbusinesses in towns.These people havegenerally gravitatedtowards the anglophone educationsystem, resulting inasituationwhere Chinese andViet- namesebusiness people mayneed tomake use ofBislama with each other as an intermediarylanguage. By andlarge, the Chinese seem tomaintain much closer contactwith other overseas Chinese communities,and the localChinese languagesare maintained by the younger generationmore than we find among the Vietnamese community. There isno provision made for the maintenanceof either of these Asian languagesin the educationsystem of Vanuatu, and this has never been seen asa public issue.In fact,neither communityis ever likely toattemptto makean issue outof this,understanding full well thattheir very visible influence in the local economy makes them the occasional target for local resentment. There havealso been communitiesof Wallisians(from the French territoryof Wallisand Futuna) andGilbertese (fromnewly independent Kiribati,which was formerly partof the Gilbert andEllice Islandsadministered by Britain).While maintainingtheir respective vernaculars,the Wallisianshave generally gravitatedtowards French asa language ofeducation, while the i-Kiribati learned

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 English.However, these communitiesare now much smallerthan they used to be prior to independence. 28

Language Policy and Planning

Language planning: De facto and de jure Apartfrom the constitutionalclauses relating to language thatwere presented in The Language Profile ofVanuatu, there isno legal reference tolanguage planning ofany kind in place in Vanuatu.There havebeen numerouscalls from academicsand language practitionersin the pastfor some kind ofofficial activity in thisarea given the linguisticdiversity of the nationand the kinds ofmeasures 98 Current Issues in Language Planning

thatmight be consideredto bothprotect and foster that diversity (Lynch, 1979; PacificChurches ResearchCentre &the Universityof the South Pacific,1981; Crowley,1984; Pacific Languages Unit, 1984; Crowley & Lynch, 1985;Crowley, 1989a;Thomas, 1990; Early, 1999), and the ombudsmanhas issued a seriesof reportson the need forsome kind oflanguage planning activity(Office ofthe Ombudsman,1995, 1996, 1997). Although these suggestionsand recommenda- tionsare notnecessarily all along exactly the samelines, itis no exaggeration to statethat to date nothing hasever followedfrom any ofthese suggestionsin terms oflegislation,or indeed anykind ofgovernment-sanctionedpolicy statements forimplementation, with the exception ofrecent movesin the directionof setting up aprogrammeof initial vernacular education (as mentioned in Language Spread). The closestto any de jure language policy fromgovernment is what follows directlyfrom what is containedin the constitution.The principal languagesof educationcurrently areEnglish andFrench, while English,French andBislama havea varietyof official functions, with Bislama functioning asa kind of pseudo-nationallanguage toallowpeople toavoidmaking a politicallydivisive choice between English and French. Arecent survey conductedby myself ofa randomlyselected setof govern- mentoffices andoffices of governmentauthorities shows that whatever the constitutionimplies aboutthe constitutionalequality ofBislama, English and French asofficiallanguages, there isconsiderablelaxity in howthis is applied in termsof signage andpublic notices.Offices thatoccupy formercondominium (i.e. jointBritish and French) offices often retainthe pre-1980signs with no change, and these were often scrupulously bilingual in English and French. The PostOffice (orHotel des Postes) is one such,where signsindicating the availabilityof stamps,where one canregister one’ s letters,or whichpostbox is forlocal and overseas mail are still in English andFrench, but notBislama. However,more recently produced signssuch as thoseon the post-independence doors,as well asthe new public telephones andthe new slotfor missorted mail, areinEnglish only.The only public use ofwrittenBislama in the postoffice wasa computerprintout in three languagesinforming the public thatpost office staff will notopen anypost boxes for people whohave forgotten their keys. In the Ministryof Education offices –whichformerly housed the French Education Office –manymore signs are in French only,as educationprior to independence was a national rather than a condominium responsibility. Completely new offices displaya range ofusesof the three officiallanguages.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 In the Police Station,some signs are in English only,some in French only,and someare in Bislamaonly. In the municipal library,the signson the frontappear in allthree languagesin lettering ofequal size,though the hoursof opening are given in English andFrench but notBislama. The sign atthe frontof the National Museum isin Bislamaonly, while the displaysinside aredescribed in allthree languages.In the offices ofthe internationalairline Air Vanuatuand the domes- ticairline Vanair,most public signage isin English only,with some material appearing in both English and French, though largely ignoring Bislama. Where Bislamaappears in apublic sign ornotice in agovernmentoffice, it tendsnot to be used toannounce what something is; rather, it is more likely tobe used totell people whatto do(orwhat not to do) while they arein thatoffice. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 99

Thus,Bislama is more likely tobe used totell people notto smoke,to remember toclose the door,to walk and not run in caseof fire, ornot to leave rubbish behind. English andFrench, however,are more likely tobe used toannounce thata particularoffice iswhere the Departmentof Finance islocated, or where the Director-General’s office is. The extremely tenuoushold of Bislama as agenuine nationallanguage isillus- tratedby arecent incident aboutwhich it is not possible atthisstage for legal reasonsto provide specific details.It can be reported,however, that one govern- mentauthority has been given noticeby the Office ofthe Ombudsman(in aletter writtenonly in English) thatthe authoritywas under investigationfor having violatedthe provisionsof the constitutionby havingadvertised several positions only in Bislama.These were positionsthat were intended forNi-Vanuatu, yet the Office ofthe Ombudsmanwas insisting that the positionsshould have been advertisedeither bothin English orFrench, orin Bislama,English andFrench, but not in Bislama only. Becauseof the constitutionallyequal statusof English andFrench, there isa government‘ Language Services’department, whose duties are primarily to ensure thatimportant official documents written in either English orFrench are madeavailable in the otherlanguage. Despite the name,the Language Services Departmenthas no rolewhatsoever relating to the statusor use ofthe nation’s locallanguages, and while staffdo carry out some translation between the metropolitanlanguages and Bislama, they makeno attempt whatsoever to promote the establishment of a written standard for the language. 29 The present statusof the vernacularlanguages of Vanuatuhas been ofconcern tomany influential Ni-Vanuatu,and there hasbeen considerablequestioning of the appropriatenessof the currentexclusive emphasison metropolitan languagesin the educationsystem. For example, ata nationalconference on language policy held in Vila in 1981,which was jointly sponsoredby the Univer- sityof the South Pacific,and the PacificChurches ResearchCentre, the dominant theme was expressed as the need to: redressthe balancecreated during the colonialera in which the major emphasishad been given toencouraging the languagesof the twometro- politanpowers. (Pacific Churches ResearchCentre &Universityof the South Pacific, 1981: 4) These kinds ofissueshave also been debated in parliament.In the meeting of30 April 1982,for example, there wasdebate onthe roleof Bislama in schools.Prac-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 ticallyall discussion was either in favourof using Bislamaas a medium of instructionin schools,or amuch greateruse ofvernaculars in schools,with just a few speakersarguing in favourof maintainingthe statusquo with English and French. There wasno actual vote taken to determine future policy inthisregard however,and subsequent policy decisionsuntil the late1990s indicated that there wasnoreal political will tofollowup these earlier expressionsof opinion. UseofBislamaas amedium ofinitialeducation is likely notto be acceptedby mostparents,and Charpentier (1999)even goessofarastopredict majorpublic demonstrationsifBislamawere tobeadoptedas amedium ofinstructionover vernaculars.Siegel (1996b)writes more encouragingly ofthe potentialfor Bislamaas alanguage offormaleducation, but until public attitudestowards 100 Current Issues in Language Planning

the language change significantly,it is likely thatthe roleof Bislama as a language ofinstructionwill be primarilyin the non-formalsector or inthearea ofadultliteracy. Vanuatu’s constitutionprovides for the establishmentof a Councilof Chiefs, knownas the Malvatumauri,which has a responsibility toguide government policy in mattersrelating to Melanesian traditionsin Vanuatu,and in land tenure. The Malvatumauriissued a documentin 1983stating the guidelines withinwhich itoperates, and thisdocument includes avery firm commitmentto the ideaof including vernacularlanguages in the formaleducation system in Vanuatu (Paramount Chiefs Malvatumauri, 1983). The firstNational Development Planfor the period 1982–86 stated that the governmentintended toset up aVanuatuEducation Commission, which would havethe responsibility,among other things, for deciding whichlanguage (or languages) shouldbe used atvariousstages of instruction(National Planning Office, 1982).However, that plan –aswell asthe subsequent five-year plan – passed, with no such commission being established. Official attitudestowards language in the twentyyears of Vanuatu’ s independence havetherefore largely involvedsome talk, but littleaction. To be alittle kinder, itcould be saidthat while there hasbeen very littlereal de jure language planning activityconducted in Vanuatu,the de facto policy couldperhaps be characterised as an extreme case of laissez-faire . Thisofficial attitude perhaps reflects somethingof the traditionalattitude towardslanguages. In highly multilingual Melanesian societies,people tend to havefairly pragmaticrather than strongly ideological views about the use of languagesin the sense thatthe primaryobjective in using alanguage isto convey ameaning. In additionto these laissez-faire viewsabout language planning, Isee thisattitude reflected in avery relaxedtolerance that people havetowards the formof amessagein alanguage. Messagescommunicated in Bislamawill be acceptedin practicallyany form, even if thatform is quite deviantfrom normal grammatical patterns and lexical norms, as long as it can be understood. In fact,even intelligibility ofcontentis not always required, aspoliticiansare apparentlyfree toanglicisetheir Bislamarandomly to rural audiences in away thatsometimes communicates nothing totheir audience apartfrom the factthat politiciansconsider themselves far better educatedin ametropolitanlanguage thantheir constituents.The factthat suggestions that greater editorial control overthe formof translationsinto Bislama should be exercised in the mediahave alsorepeatedly gone unheard isfurther evidence ofthe samekind ofattitude.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 The willingness ofspeakersof locallanguages to accept stylistically odd, or even grammaticallydeviant, biblical translations(see above) canalso be seen asan example of the same kind of attitude. However,people’ s pragmatismin thisregard is often tested,and there isa real issueconcerning the extent towhich the kind ofBislama that is used publicly by well-educated Ni-Vanuatu tolesser educated people isactually correctly understood.Charpentier (1979:394– 5) citesthe followingletter to the editorof the New Hebrides News in 1978:

Plantetaim me lisinlong Pidgin Newslong RadioNew Hebrides be some- timeme noandastand gud fromwe olgetaradio man oli iusum plante The Language Situation in Vanuatu 101

English wordswe minosavemining blong olgeta.Me mansikul mestap long town,be meworifrom olgeta papa mo mamablong yumi long island, we mibilif olino saveandastand Pidgin Newslong radio.Me talemtoktok iafrom we inolong taim,i katwan olfalablong yumi long islandemi askem mifrom mining blong word‘ affectem’we emi haremlong Pidgin news long radio. 30

Perhaps throughconstant exposure tosuch vocabulary over twenty years, people appearto havebecome inured tosuch usage, and they seldombother any moreto complain. 31 However,the issuehas not gone awayasshownby Masing’s (1992:20– 21) report of amorerecent incident where agovernmentminister on tourto a ruralcommunity gave a public speech which,to this well-educated observer, seemed impressive, yet the local reaction was negative. Further investigationrevealed thatsignificant points in the minister’s speech were simply notunderstood at allwhen the tapedversion was played backto people. Forinstance, the ministerat one pointdeclared Polisiolsem i adresem situesen blongyumi tedei ‘Such apolicy addressesour situation today’ . However, localpeople simply didnot understand this sentence atall,the reasonbeing that adresem and situesen arelexical items that are probably never used by ordinary ruralpeople (andit is possible thatsome people maynot be entirely clearabout the word polisi aswell). If the ministerhad wanted to speak absolutelyclearly to these people, he shouldpossibly have said something like Planolsem ya ifolem stret laefwe yumistap long hem tedei ‘Such aplan isin closeaccordance with the life thatwe areexperiencing today’. Thiskind ofcreeping anglicisationin public achievesnothing except toconstantlyremind the ruralpublic thatthey donot speak English well enough tobecome acommunityleader oraRadioVanuatu announcer in Bislama. Thissituation has arisen because althoughBislama has been declaredto be the nationallanguage, there hasnever been anycoordinated attempt to provide speakersof the language withthe kind ofvocabularywhich would enable itto be used forthe wide range offunctionsto which itis regularly being put without people havingto resortto ad hoc solutions.In anycase, even if suchsteps were to be taken,there isno institutional framework in place forthat kind ofvocabulary tobe disseminated,as Bislamahas no place withinthe educationsystem (Lynch, 1996).As aresultof the situationin Vanuatu’s earlycolonial history, Bislama was alanguage thathad no status among any of its users. As a result,speakers of Bislamaundeniably face difficulties today.History has left Vanuatuwith a

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 nationallanguage thatis not fully standardisedin itswritten form, and which is lacking vocabularywhen comparedto the technicalsphere in English and French, andwhen comparedto localvernaculars in the sphere oflocal knowledge and culture. By‘unstandardised’, Imeanthat there isno generally acceptednorm against whichdifferent individual andregional uses can be judged in formaland written usesof the language. Thatis to say,people often donot know what is considered tobe ‘right’or ‘wrong’when they arewritingBislama. Spellings alsotend tovary randomlybetween ‘phonemic’spellings andthe ‘etymological’spellings, which moreclosely resemble the spelling ofthe wordin English (orFrench, if itis a wordof French origin). Forinstance, a writtentext in Bislamamay be found with 102 Current Issues in Language Planning

the wordfor ‘ republic’spelt in anyof the followingways: ripablik, repablic, ripublic, republik, republic, repablique, ripablique, republique (andthis does not exhaustall possibilities 32).The banknotesin the nationalcurrency, the vatu, 33 are markedas havingbeen issuedby the CentralBank blong Vanuatu andnot, as we might have expected, the Sentrol Bang blong Vanuatu . Also,when borrowedwords are acceptedinto Bislama, speakers face achoice insomecases of two forms of the sameword, one derived fromEnglish andthe otherderived fromFrench. Forinstance, should a new wordlike ‘centimetre’be expressed in Bislamaas sentimita (based onitsEnglish form)or as sontimet (based onitsFrench form),or perhaps assomekind ofmixtureof the two,e.g. sontimeta? Speakers doin factalternate in these kinds ofwayswhen facedwith this situation,such as when writingfor the newspaper, the Vanuatu Weekly/Hebdomadaire , forinstance, or speaking overRadio Vanuatu (Ligo, 1981), or taking part in parliamentary debate, or making any kind of public speech at all in fact. Something ofa de facto standardfor the spelling ofBislama has, in fact, emerged in recent years(Crowley, 1996a). Pastor Bill Camdenwas among the firstto set about devising anorthographyfor the language in the early1970s. His spellings were originallysystematised in anunpublished spelling listthat was distributedat the timeamong expatriates who were learning Bislama,and others whowere interested in the religious translationwork that he wasinvolved in. Some ofthe earlyspellings thathe adoptedwere different fromthose that are morewidely followedtoday, such as the use of ai torepresent the diphthong in Krais ‘Christ’(which isspelt Kraes today),and the appearanceof avowelbetween the two consonants in bilong ‘of’ (which is written today as blong). Camden’s initialspelling systemwas based on his own understanding of the phonologicalsystem of Bislama, and perhaps alsoin parton pre-existing ortho- graphicconventions for mutually intelligible TokPisin (spoken inPapuaNew Guinea), where suchspellings hadfor some time been relativelyfixed. Not surprisingly, thisfirst attempt to systematisespellings wassubject torevision, andan editorialcommittee of people involvedin Bible translationsat between 1974and1976 to determine amoregenerally acceptablespelling system.It was at thattime that the spellings ai and au were changed to ae and ao respectively, largely toreflect the preference ofNi-Vanuatu onthe committeewho reportedly felt thatthese spellings were moreappropriate to what they perceived tobe the phonetic values of these diphthongs. The managerof MaropaBookshop, which was one ofthe mainbooksellers in PortVila atthe time,then askedCamden if he wouldproduce areference dictio-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 nary(Camden, personal communication). Accordingly, in 1977he produced A DescriptiveDictionary: Bislama to English ,whichMaropa Bookshop then published andmarketed. Although thisbook suffered fromthe unfortunatelack ofanEnglish-Bislama section, it filled amuch needed gap andcame tobe widely used forthe remainderof the 1970sand throughout the 1980sas a sourceof Bislama usage and spelling. Since language wasvery much oneverybody’s mindat the timethat Vanuatu gained itsindependence in 1980,the PacificChurches ResearchCentre andthe Universityof the South Pacificin 1981jointly convened aconference todiscuss language policy in the country.This conference discusseda wide range ofissues relatingto the statusof notjust French andEnglish, but alsoof vernacular The Language Situation in Vanuatu 103

languagesand Bislama.In hisopening address,the then Prime Minister,Hon. Fr Walter Lini, focused his comments on the importance of: ...developing Bislamaas the mainlanguage ofcommunicationwithin the country. ..He assuredthe conference ofthe present government’s full supportshould appropriate recommendations regarding the development ofBislama emerge fromthe discussions.(Pacific Churches ResearchCentre and the University of the South Pacific, 1981: 4) The conference wasvaluable in thatit allowed influential Ni-Vanuatu tovoice their attitudesto Bislama and the questionof standardisation publicly. Some opin- ionsreflected the kindsof colonial attitudes of English speakersin the pre-independence era.Tor (1981) expressed the doubtthat Bislama was a reallanguage at all,in the followingwords: ‘ So far,the language (if Imaycall it so) has not been standardised.’Other comments related to the lackof teachingmaterials and the lackof technical vocabulary in Bislama,which would prevent itswider use in the formaleducation system (Liliu, 1981;Tor, 1981). The lackof standardisation in Bislamaspelling wasrepeatedly seen asastumbling block in securing anywider range offunctions for the language. In the end, the conference didnot resolve any substantiveissues relating to the development ofastandardisedorthography for Bislama.However, participants did call for the governmentto establish a permanent commissionthat should report regularly onthe use anddevelopment ofthe languagesof Vanuatuin the life ofthe country. Despite ageneral feeling atthatconference thatstandardisation of Bislama orthographywas desirable, no specific resolutionswere passedas to what shouldrepresent the standard,since itwas felt thatthis was an area that would require further linguistic research.However, since the commissionthat the conference calledfor was never established,no formal mechanism was ever established for following through on this suggestion at an official level. While parliamentarians,government officials and foreign academicsand adviserswere discussingthe statusof Bislama and the issueof standardisation, ordinarypeople continued towritethe language. Although the spellings in the translationsof the gospels,along with the subsequent hymnalsand also Camden’s dictionary,had a significantimpact on how some people wrotethe language, these spellings were certainlynot immediately adopted by everybody. Charpentier (1979:168– 92) documents the widespreadvariability in spellings thatrapidly developed in secularwritten materials as an increasingamount of materialin Bislamawas published in the run-up toindependence, andalso in the

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 aftermath of independence. Given the lackof anyofficial support for the spellings used by the churches, Camden’s originalspellings were further fine-tuned foruse in biblical translated materialsunder the auspicesof the KokonasBaebol Translesen (‘CoconutBible Translation’) teamin Luganville. Although thisgroup included representation froma varietyof Christiandenominations, as well asNi-Vanuatu froma number ofdifferent islands,the influence ofCamden’s earlier spellings wasclearly obvi- ousin the spelling listthat was issued as Ling et al. (1984)under the title Fasin blongraetem Bislama (‘The Wayto write Bislama’ ). Although thiswas not formally published, the KokonasBible translationteam did makethe listavailable to those who were interested. 104 Current Issues in Language Planning

The lackof public availabilityof the listmeant that many people couldnot check their spellings againstthis latest set of authorised Kokonas spellings. Anotherproblem forthe secularwriter was that this list contained an under- standableconcentration of spellings forwords in the religious area(e.g. namesof booksof the Bible suchas Hibrus ‘Hebrews’, Habakuk ‘Habakkuk’), while a substantialnumber of lowerfrequency non-religious wordswere completely lacking (e.g. naleplep ‘mud’, nasiksik ‘kind ofbird’). There were alsosome spellings thathad been publicised earlier whichwere alteredby the Kokonasteam, which mostsecular writers could not have known about. This led toa continuationof the situationof the 1970sand the 1980sin which ecclesiasticaltexts were published withsystematic spellings, while spellings in seculartexts ranged alonga continuumbetween thoseset out in Camden(1977) and a much more ad hoc anglicised (and sometimes even gallicised) set of spellings. While there wasoften randomvariation in the spelling ofsecular Bislama materials,they containeda number ofspelling conventionsthat were becoming increasingly consistent,and these were sometimesat variance with spellings found in ecclesiasticalmaterials. Around the timethat the 1984spelling listwas circulatedby the KokonasBaebol team, it was becoming apparentthat there was apossibilityof twoseparate varieties of writtenBislama emerging: anecclesiasti- cal Bislama on the one hand, and a secular Bislama on the other hand. Some journalistswith Radio Vanuatu at the time,after having taken a course intranslationtechniques atthe Universityof the South Pacific,came to recognise the unnecessarydifficulty ofthe taskthat they regularly facedin havingto trans- latenews bulletins fromEnglish intoBislama at short notice and with no set guidelines fortranslation. It was therefore decided thata Komitiblong Bislama (‘BislamaCommittee’ ) shouldbe establishedto assistthem in thistask. Sitting on thiscommittee were people workingwith the Media Department(under which issubsumed bothRadio Vanuatu and the officialgovernment newspaper Vanuatu Weekly/Hebdomadaire ),Language Services (which providesofficial translationsfor a varietyof governmentdepartments), as well asrepresentatives ofa varietyof government and non-government organisationsinvolved in providing the public accessto developmental information,such as the Curricu- lum Development Unitand the Summer Instituteof Linguistics.Also sitting on the committeein anadvisory capacity was a representativeof the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific. While the committeedid notsee standardisationof spelling asits primary objective, somedecisions regarding spelling were unavoidablegiven thatwords

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 needed tobe writtendown in orderfor them to be disseminatedto departments in government,as well asnon-government organisationswhich might like to makeuse ofthese lists.The committeeended upendorsinga number ofortho- graphicdecisions that were in line withsecular preference andwhich were at variancewith the 1984Kokonas spelling list.These included the followingin particular:

(1) Thatthe glide y shouldbe writtenas i immediatelyafter a consonant,as in a word such as giaman ‘tell lies’. In ecclesiasticalmaterials, the spelling y was being used, i.e. gyaman. (2) The postposeddemonstrative ‘ this,that’ should be exceptionally spelt ia, The Language Situation in Vanuatu 105

rather than ya asin ecclesiasticalmaterials (and in conformitywith Camden’s earliest spelling).

The committeemet fairly regularly between 1986and 1988 and assembled a substantialbody ofterminologicaldecisions, which were continuallyupdated oncomputer and distributed to members ofthe committee.By 1988,however, committeemembers began tofeel asense offrustrationbecause someof their office managersdid not allow time for their staffto attend the monthlymeetings, arguing thatthis was not a proper partof their job. In anycase, their decisions bore noofficial weight andthere wasnowayof enforcing (oreven encouraging) compliancefrom the general public, except perhaps by example. In addition,the committeehad no budget forsecretarial staff or printing in orderto disseminate its decisions more widely. Becauseof these difficulties, the secretaryof the committeein 1988made a formalproposal to the Prime Minister’s Department(which wasresponsible for bothMedia Departmentand Language Services) thatgovernment should grant the committeethe powerto makeofficial decisions in the areaof the lexicaldevel- opmentand in the standardisationof the spelling of Bislama.Receipt of this proposalwas never acknowledged by the Prime Minister’s office, andthere was certainly no decision taken to act on the recommendations. In fact,despite myreference tothe Prime Minister’s expressionof supportfor the standardisationof writtenBislama in 1981(Pacific Churches ResearchCentre andthe Universityof the South Pacific,1981: 4), he appearsto haveundergone a rapidchange ofopinion because in the published summaryof the 1982debate on language in parliament, the Hon. Fr Walter Lini went on record as saying:

...The only reasonto teach Bislama in schoolswas to read it and write it. Thiswould require standardisation,and would take the life outof it.If they wantedto makeit aunifying factorthey shouldnot teach it. (Summarised Record of Proceedings, 1st ordinary session of 1982, Friday April 30)

Given thisstatement, the lackof success of the proposalfrom the Komitiblong Bislama should perhaps not have been too surprising. Bythe late1980s, Camden’ s dictionarywas out of print.Not only this,but it wasconsiderably out of datein thatmuch new vocabularyand many new expressionshad entered the language in the intervening yearsof social and polit- icaldevelopment. Given the obviousneed forsome kind ofdictionaryof Bislama tobe madeavailable to the public, Crowley(1990b) published anupdated dictio-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 nary,which also included anEnglish-Bislama section that was lacking in Camden’s original dictionary. Thisdictionary was compiled withoutany official and representative body to decide onorthographicissues, so itwas explicitly statedthat ‘ thisdictionary is notintended asa spelling reference manual’(Crowley, 1990b: 29). Its main purpose, therefore, wasto show the meaningsand uses of Bislama words. However,since consistency is obviously necessary when writinga dictionary, somedecisions had to be madewhere there wasvariability in the waysin which wordswere spelled. The strategythat was followed was basically to adoptthe spellings in Ling et al. (1984)except in caseswhere popular usageseemed tobe at variancewith these recommendations.In particular,the dictionaryreflected the 106 Current Issues in Language Planning

decisionsmade earlier by the Komitiblong Bislama .In casesof orthographicvaria- tion,etymological solutions were adopted,or solutionsbased on the preferences ofyounger andmore educated people, asthese were felt tobe morelikely tobe the people actuallywriting the language forpublication. Thus, spellings suchas fifti ‘fifty’ and giaman ‘tell lies’were favouredover the ecclesiasticalpreference for spellings such as fefte and gyaman. Asfar as possible,however, the dictionaryreflected asfull arange aspossible ofpronunciations of words in Bislama.Thus, for example, awordsuch as nabanga ‘banyan’was also entered with napanga, nabangga, nambanga and nambangga being variantsof the sameword. This meant that no attempt was made to specify which of these spellings should be regarded as ‘standard’. In attemptingto please everybody in thisrespect, the dictionaryseems to have ended up pleasing nobody.Those who favoured the spellings inLing et al. (1984) felt thatthe dictionarywas likely toundermine the workin standardisationthat they hadalready done. In desperationfor a standardspelling, somesecular organisationsinputted the entries in Crowley(1990b) as a basisfor a computer spell-check listsince noother list was publicly available,although the original intentionwas thatthis kind ofthing shouldnot happen. Itseems that despite any originaldisclaimers, people simply sawCrowley (1990b) as a dictionaryand assumedthat what it contained was automatically to be treatedas asetof standard spellings. However,when people triedto use Crowley(1990b) in thisway, they found thatin manycases it did not give the firm guidance thatthey wanted.Somebody wantingto knowhow to spell the wordfor ‘ banyan’, forexample, wouldfind the dictionaryof littlehelp asitcontained a whole arrayof spellings. Requestswere subsequently madefor firmer guidance tobe given if anyrevised formof the dictionary were to be produced. By 1995,stocks of Crowley(1990b) were completely exhausted.It was clear thata reprint ofthe originaldictionary was out of questionand that a new and moreprescriptive editionwould need tobe produced tomeet the expectations thatpeople haveof adictionary.While apurely descriptivedictionary can be produced by justa single person,this is clearlynot the casewith a prescriptive dictionary,as this must meet somekind ofcommunity expectations. In 1995, WilsonKaluat of the Summer Instituteof Linguisticsapproached me aboutprog- resson the revised edition,asking me particularlyabout the extentof my flexibil- ityon orthographicissues. It was his hope thatsome kind ofunification could takeplace between the emerging secularand ecclesiastical standardised spell-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 ings. If anyprogress was tobe madein thisarea, it was clear that some kind ofinter- mediarybody wouldneed tobe establishedin orderto facilitate discussion between proponentsof one spelling overanother. Fortunately, by thisstage representativesof anumber ofnon-governmentalorganisations had established the LiteracyAssociation ofVanuatu asanumbrella body tocoordinate policies and practicesin the areaof literacy,both secular and ecclesiastical. The questionof Bislamaorthography was clearly one thatcould legitimately comeunder the aegisof sucha committee.In the absence of anyappropriate governmental agency, thiscommittee then became the arbiterin caseswhere there were differences about how particular words, or categories of words, should be spelled. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 107

The committeeincluded representativesfrom a varietyof bodies.Included fromthe governmentwere the Curriculum Development Unitand Media Services, aswell asthe Malvatumauri,i.e. the NationalCouncil of Chiefs. Secular non-government organisationsincluded NasonalKomuniti Development Trust, NationalCouncil of Women and the Universityof the South Pacific.Finally, the Summer Instituteof Linguisticsand the KokonasBaebol translators were represented as religious organisations. John Lynch fromthe Universityof the South Pacificwas asked to chairan ad hoc committeeof the associationto deal with unification of spelling. His approachwas to isolatethose areas in whichthere hadbeen lackof agreement andto seek toestablish the extentto which particularspellings hadmost wide- spreadsupport among committee members. Decisions were then transmittedto myself ascompiler of the dictionaryand to the BislamaBible translatorsfor adoptionin the textof the Bible thatwas being prepared forpublication to allow commentand reaction before afinal decisionwas made. The resultwas the appearanceof Crowley(1995b) as apublished dictionary,and on the basisof this, astandardisedspelling listhas been distributedto thoseinterested for use on computers.

Literacy There isno legislation in place which relatesto the promotionof literacy, and the only legal references toliteracyof which I amawareare the constitutional provisionsmentioned earlier whichimply thatEnglish andFrench, asprincipal languagesof education,should be regardedas the majorlanguages of literacyin the country(more particularly in the wordingfound in the French text).Govern- mentpolicy, then, isgeared towardsthe promotionof literacy in these two languages via the formal education system. There hasnever been anycomprehensive survey ofthe countryto determine the extentof literacy,nor to determine whichlanguages people areliterate in. The 1999national census was the firstto include aquestionrelating to literacy. It will be interesting toexamine the resultsof this question when the published resultsappear, though there aresome reasons for expressing somecaution beforehand in interpreting these figures. The censusquestion asked individuals if they were literatein ‘alocallanguage’ (without asking which one), Bislama, English,French or‘anyother language’ . Some enumeratorsallowed respondents togive a‘yes’answer to morethan one ofthese possibilities,while otherenumerators interpreted their instructions as allowing for only one possible choice.

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Anotherobvious problem witha questionthat asks simply whether one can readand write in aparticularlanguage isthe questionof degrees ofcompetence. Iwitnessedone respondent saythat he couldread and write in hisvernacular ‘justa littlebit’ . Havingindependently witnessedthis person attempting to read printed storiesin the language, Idonotthink thatthis person was being unduly modestin hisassessment of his own abilities, as he isfarmore literate in Bislama thanhe isin hisown language, andquite possiblymore literate in English thanin hisown language. However,the censusform in thiscase will suggestequal degrees of literacy in all three languages. Secular literacyin non-metropolitanlanguages is currently being actively promotedin Vanuatuin anumber ofdifferent partsof the countryand by a 108 Current Issues in Language Planning

varietyof organisations.Siegel (1996a:103–7) indicatesthat anumber ofsecular non-governmentalorganisation s(e.g. NasonalKomuniti Developmen Trust, Foundationfor the People ofthe South Pacific,Vanuatu National Council of Women,Vanuatu Preschools Association, Vanuatu Rural Development Train- ing CentresAssociation) have been involved inthe promotionof secularliter- acyeither in localvernaculars or in Bislamaamong teenagers andadults, and sometimesalso children, outsidethe contextof theformaleducation system. A number oforganisationswith religious affiliations(e.g. the Anglican Church, NationalSpiritual Assembly ofthe Baha’i Faith,the Presbyterian Church and WorldVision Vanuatu) havealso promoted vernacular literacy or literacyin Bislamain different areasin the contextof public education,typically in mattersrelating to public health,agriculture, women’ s affairsand environmen- tal issues. Asmentioned earlier,the EducationMaster Plan that is currently under devel- opmentaims to fostervernacular literacy by teachingstudents around the countryto read and write in their vernacularsfor the firstthree yearsof their formal schooling in the local language.

Language planning agencies There areno government agencies thatcan be referred toaslanguage planning agencies in Vanuatu.Although the Ministryof Educationand the Language Services Departmentoperate in different areasof language activity,this mostly involvesthe relationshipbetween English andFrench, asalreadydescribed in. Otherarms of governmentwhich areactive in different sortsof waysin relation to language in Vanuatu are described below.

Vanuatu Cultural Centre Thisis an institution which, in additionto administering the National Museum andthe NationalLibrary, is responsible formaking recommendations onculturalpolicy, as well asfor implementing decisionsin thisarea, including the approval of linguistic researchers from overseas universities. The CulturalCentre hasset up anextensive networkof volunteer ‘fieldworkers’based in their localcommunities, who take responsibility forrecording informationrelating to importantor endangered localknowledge. Much ofthis informationis recordedin the locallanguage, andit is then held ondepositin the archivesof the CulturalCentre. These fieldworkers havealso been encouraged to recordtraditional stories, along with culturally significant vocabulary in local

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 languages.However, despite the factthat these activitieshave been going onfor severaldecades now, much ofthe informationthat has been collectedhas been depositedin archivesand Port Vila withoutbeing recirculatedback into local communities in a form that is accessible to those communities. Onoccasion,the CulturalCentre hasentered intodebates at the nationallevel relatingto language. Asmentioned below,for example, the CulturalCentre responded tothe 1996ombudsman’ s reporton the observanceof national multilingualismin Vanuatuby criticisingthe neglect in the reportof issues relating to the nation’s vernaculars. During thelatterpart of the 1990s,there hasbeen alinguist attachedtempo- rarilyto theCulturalCentre. Theresponsibilitiesattached to thisposition have The Language Situation in Vanuatu 109

been topromote training in linguisticsfor the fieldworkers,to organise and archivematerials with linguistic content(including oraltradition) that are housed bythe CulturalCentre, recordany useful linguistic informationabout anypartof thecountry,and tocontributeto public commenton language issues generally, especially withregard to locallanguages and Bislama. Many ofthese dutiescould be characterisedas ‘warehousing’(or ‘ museum- ising’) linguisticinformation. Given thatthere isstrong community pressure for the recordingand archiving of archaicand obsolete linguistic data,it isdifficult toenvisage anyalternative options for a linguist associatedwith the Vanuatu CulturalCentre. In fact,any linguist conductingresearch independently ofthe CulturalCentre typicallyfaces strong normative pressure fromlocal communi- tiesto record archaic and obsoletevocabulary (sometimes even tothe exclusion of modern lexical innovations).

Office of the Ombudsman In accordancewith Article 62:3 of the constitution,the ombudsmanbegan issuing annualreports on the observanceof multilingualism in the countryin 1995.(The 15-yeardelay between the initialpromulgation of the constitutionand the issuanceof the firstreport was caused, in part,by the factthat for many years governmentsfailed tomake an appointment to the constitutionallyrequired position of the ombudsman.) 34 The ombudsman’s secondreport in 1996commented that the setof recom- mendationsthat were madein the 1995report were justas valida yearlater, but thatwhile thoserecommendations were politely received by government,there wasno move towards implementation (Office ofthe Ombudsman,1996: 4). In particular,the ombudsmancomplained that no agency hadbeen establishedto monitorthe standardof writtentexts or to oversee the development ofterminol- ogy.Additional recommendations were madein the 1997report, including the following: (1) Itwas recommendedthat parliamentary minutes should be recordedin the language used in the member’s actualspeech. While 95%of parliamentary statementsare delivered in Bislama(Office ofthe Ombudsman,1996: 13), the minutes are kept exclusively in English and French. (2) The ombudsmanrecommended thatthere shouldalso be high level moni- toringthrough a tertiaryeducational institution of trends in writtenand spoken Bislama,leading ultimatelyto the development ofastandardised form of the language. Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 While someof the ombudsman’s recommendationshave been positivelyviewed by academicobservers, the reportshave so far been adisappointmentto many whohave professional expertise andexperience withthe language situationin Vanuatu.Having chosen to interpret the constitutionalrequirement toreporton ‘the observanceof multilingualism’primarily to mean ensuring the equal status ofEnglish andFrench, withsome additional attention being paidto Bislama, there hasbeen very littlemention of the indigenous languagesof the country. The contentof the reportshas been severely critiqued inprint fortheir narrow- nessby Early(1999), as well asin anunpublished responseto the 1996report by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. 110 Current Issues in Language Planning

University of the South Pacific The Universityof the South Pacificis not a directarm of the governmentof Vanuatu,though the government,along with a number ofother regional governments,does have some sayin the governanceof the university throughits minis- terialmember onthe university council.The university isalso not in anysense a language planning agency,though the PacificLanguages Unit of the university wasestablished in Vanuatuin 1983.Its current mission statement incorporates the following aims:

(1) toraise the awarenessof PacificIslanders about problems andissues relatingto their ownlanguages andother languages spoken in their countries; (2) toprovide PacificIslanders with the skillsnecessary to ensure the survival and development of their languages; (3) to teach university credit courses in and about Pacific languages; and (4) toconduct research into Pacific languages and the language situationin the region. The Unitoffers anundergraduate major in PacificLanguage Studies, which includes individualcourses on language issuesin the Pacific,translation and dictionary-making,as well asothercourses providing amoregeneral linguistic background. In line withthis mission statement, the PacificLanguages Unit has acted in a varietyof otherways to promotethe development ofthe languagesof the region, andin particularthose of Vanuatu.A number ofthe academicstaff of the unit overthe yearshave been appointed because oftheir activeinvolvement in the documentationof bothBislama and the locallanguages of Vanuatu (while other staffhave been involvedin documenting languagesin otherparts of the region thatthe university serves).Over the years,present andpast Pacific Languages Unitstaff such as John Lynch, RobertEarly and Terry Crowleyhave produced comprehensive descriptionsof anumber ofVanuatulanguages. The university hasalso encouraged the development of secularvernacular literatures by providing apublishing outletfor collections of vernacularstories in anumber of languages(Viralalao, 1981; Carlot, 1983; Crowley& Mael,1984; Tabi & Buli, 1985; Mabonlala, 1986; Luwi et al., 1988; Vira et al., 1997). The PacificLanguages Unit has in the pastsought to raise awareness about Bislamain particular.Because Bislama has not been taughtas asubject –oroften even been toleratedas a language of verbalinteraction in classroomsin

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Vanuatu– itwas decided thata tertiarycourse about Bislama which is taught in Bislamashould be developed (Crowley,1996b). However, in developing such coursematerials, the problem ofthe lackof aviable setof metalinguistictermi- nologyin the language hadto be faced.Given the kinds oflinguistic conceptsthat were needed, itwas necessaryto develop afairly extensive setof linguistictermi- nology from scratch. In makingsuch terminological decisions, the following general principles were followed: (1) If anexistingBislama term could easily be semanticallyextended toexpress anew meaning, then the firstpreference wastodothis. In discussingword The Language Situation in Vanuatu 111

classes,for example, the meaning ofthe word kale ‘wedge’was extended to refer tothe classof conjunctions, as these canbe conceivedof as ‘wedging’a subordinateclause into a complexsentence. The extensionof the meaning of the word nem ‘name’to refer tonouns is based on the factthat we sometimes dothe samekind ofthing in English,when people refer tonounsas ‘naming words’. (2) If acompoundwas based on pre-existing Bislamaforms, and derived accordingto existing patterns of compounding, and is semantically fairly transparent,this solution was preferred toborrowing a new term.Thus, ratherthan borrowing the word morpheme as mofim,itwas decided torefer to morphemes as haf-toktok ‘pieces of words’. (3) If neither ofthese strategiesproduced asatisfactorysolution, borrowings were used.Preference wasgiven toborrowingsthat could be identifiable withboth an English anda French source.Thus, kreol wasadopted as the termfor ‘ creole’as people educatedin bothEnglish andFrench wouldbe able to recognise the source word. (4) In borrowingwords from English orFrench, the preference wasto choose the formthat involved the leastamount of phonological and orthographic ‘deformation’from the originalto produce aplausible-looking Bislama word.For instance, in seeking awordfor ‘ subject’, sabjek waschosen from English,as the source.If the French word sujet hadbeen chosenas the source instead,the regular rules fordealing withborrowings from French into Bislamawould have resulted in the form sise,whichwould probably have French-educated andEnglish-educated people alike wondering asto its source. The general principle wasadopted that borrowing should be avoidedunless all otheroptions had been triedfirst. Given thatthe word preposition is found in English and préposition in French, itmight seem naturalthat the bestchoice in Bislamawould be tosimply adoptthe form preposisen.In fact,however, this term wasavoided in favourof hinsis,which isa pre-existing wordin Bislama,meaning ‘hinge’. Clearly,then, strategy(1) hasover-ridden strategy(4) inthiscase. This is notan isolatedcase, as the examplesin Table 4illustrateother examples of the samekind ofterminological decisions. Some ofthe kinds of compoundsthat were adoptedin preference towords of English andFrench originthat could have been borrowed are also set out in Table 5. While itmay seem somewhatperverse toinsiston theuse ofnon-English and Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Table 4 Bislama grammatical terminology based on semantic extension Bislama word Original meaningEnglish word French word singaot ‘shout’ interjection interjection wok ‘work’ verb verbe jenis ‘replacement’ pronoun pronom plante ‘many’ plural pluriel wan ‘one’ singular singulier poen ‘point’ demonstrative démonstratif 112 Current Issues in Language Planning Table 5 Bislama grammatical terminology based on compounds Bislama word Constituent meaningsEnglish word French word dabolem smolhaf ‘double-small-part’partial reduplication réduplication partielle bislama-lanwis ‘Bislama-language’pidgin pidgin wok-nating ‘work-plain’ intransitive verb verbe intransitif wok-samting ‘work-thing’ transitive verb verbe transitif fulblok saon ‘completely-blocked stop plosive sound’ nus saon ‘nose sound’ nasal nasale

non-French words,a justificationof thiskind ofpracticeappears in the intro- ductionto the published reference grammarof Bislamain termsof the need to makeit clear that Bislama is not just a kind ofbroken English. Choosinga unique setof terminologyto describe Bislamaindicates to people thatthe language canbe talkedabout in itsown terms, without needing torefer tothe grammaticalcategories of English orFrench (oreven Latin). In additionto these official(or semi-official) organisations,there isa number ofnon-government organisationswhich areinvolved in language planning-type activities. Each of these is discussed below.

Literacy Association of Vanuatu Thisis a semi-formalcollective that includes representativesfrom a number of governmentand non-government organisationsinvolved in the promotionof literacyin the country.An ad hoc workingcommittee on Bislamaspelling was establishedin 1995by the president ofthe association.Various individuals and organisationswere askedto make submissions to the committeerelating to the standardisationof Bislama spelling. These submissionswere consideredand the resulting recommendationswere incorporatedinto the dictionarythat was published by Crowley (1995b). Itwas originallyhoped thatthe decisionsof this committee would ultimately be given somekind ofofficialendorsement, though thathas not happened asyet, nordoes it show any signs of happening. In the meantime,those organisations represented onthiscoordinating body (i.e. the Universityof the South Pacific,the Summer Instituteof Linguistics, Bislama Baebol blong Vanuatu,Nasonal

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 KomunitiDevelopmen Tras,Malvatumaori, Curriculum Development Unit, NationalCouncil of Womenand Media Services) agreed topromote the adoptionof asingle standardspelling systemfor the language, which thisdictionary aimedto facilitate,and the spellings in Baebollong Bislama ,appearing in 1996,are basically in line with those of the published dictionary. 35

Summer Institute of Linguistics The Summer Instituteof Linguistics is an international linguistic research organisationthat aims to translate the Bible intothe lesser-known languagesof the world.The organisationhas been activein Vanuatusince 1982,operating locally under the auspicesof the VanuatuChristian Council. It posts highly trained The Language Situation in Vanuatu 113

personnel torural areas to learn and then tocarryout descriptive research on indi- vidualvernaculars with a view todeveloping writingsystems (or improving existing writingsystems) for those languages, promoting literacy and translating the Bible (andassociated reading materials).These projectsare usually regardedas long-termprojects, taking up totwenty years (or more) to complete. In somecountries, this organisation has come under somepolitical suspicion because ofanassociationwith conservative regimes suchas thatof the repressive administrationof the formerIndonesian government in IrianJaya, and some academiclinguists (and anthropologists) share these suspicions.Rather than speaking outagainst repressive governments,the Summer Instituteof Linguis- ticshas generally publicly maintaineda lowprofile, presumably in orderto be allowed to continue its work. Notsurprisingly, there wassome concern expressed aboutthe possible involve- mentof the organisationin Vanuatuwhen itfirst proposed beginning operations in the early1980s, though these concernshave usually been fairlylow key. Perhaps because ofthe organisation’s vulnerability tosuch criticisms, it also maintains a fairlylow profile publicly in Vanuatu,preferring tokeep itsactivities visible atthe localrather than national level. The ombudsman’s reports,for example, which were criticisedby academicsand other national institutions, appear to have been metwith silence fromthe Summer Instituteof Linguistics. However, the organisationhas consistently worked with the full supportand appreciation of itssponsor- ing body,the VanuatuChristian Council, for the significantinput thatit has made in the development ofwritten forms of vernaculars.

Regional and international influences The language planning activitiesthat were described in the preceding section areall intranational in the sense thatthey derive fromthe workof institutions thathave been specifically setup toaddress issues relating to the situationwithin Vanuatu.At the sametime, however, there isan element ofinternational influence present with some of these institutions. In particular,the Universityof the South Pacificis a regionalinstitution which servicesthe tertiaryeducational needs oftwelve separatepolities: Solomon Islands,Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa,Tonga, Niue, Tokelau,Cook Islands, Kiribati, MarshallIslands, Nauru and Tuvalu. Although the PacificLanguages Unit is basedin Vanuatuand its staff have often been appointed onthe basisof their familiaritywith the linguisticsituation in the country,the university is constrainedin itslevel ofinvolvementwithin the countryby itsneed tobe seen to

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 be servicing the linguistic needs of the other countries as well. The Summer Instituteof Linguisticsis also an international organisation with members operatingin alargenumber ofmultilingual countries.While the details ofthe organisation’s Vanuatuoperations are largely left tothe staffon the ground toimplement locally,I havealready mentioned the impactthat the some- timesunfortunate choice in the pastof political bedmates appears to have had on the organisation’s willingness orability to speak outpublicly in Vanuatuon importantlanguage issues.The factthat it is staffed largely by expatriates– though providing practicaltraining to large numbers oflocalpeople in literacy work– alsoto some extent impairsthe abilityof the organisationto participate actively in national debate. 36 114 Current Issues in Language Planning

Regionaland international influences onthe linguisticsituation in Vanuatu canalso be found in someother areas involving organisationsthat have no formalpresence in the country.Language policy in Vanuatuis no doubt influ- enced tosome extent by events thattake place –orwhich donot take place –in neighbouring PapuaNew Guinea andSolomonIslands. These areboth Melane- siancountries which havea very similarlinguistic make-up toVanuatu, and there aremany parallels between allthree countriesin termsof language planning (or lack thereof). In the 1980s,these three countriesestablished what came to be knownas the informal‘ Melanesian Spearhead Group’of nationswithin the South Pacific. When thisgrouping wasfirstestablished, there wassomecasual consideration of the possibilityof actively promoting the development of Melanesian Pidgin throughoutthe three countries,though talkalong these lines rapidly faded out, particularlyas otherMelanesian politiessuch as Fiji andNew Caledoniacame to be involved.Since Melanesian Pidgin isnot spoken in either ofthese countries, the promotionof the language withinthis political grouping then ceasedto be a viable issue. Eventsin PapuaNew Guinea havemore recently affected language policy in Vanuatuin anotherway. The currentpush forthe development ofinitialvernac- ulareducation mentioned earlier followsa fact-finding visitconducted by staff fromthe Ministryof Educationto Papua New Guinea in 1997,where asimilar programmewas already being implemented. Thisvisit ultimately led tothe adoptionof the EducationMaster Plan referred toabove.It is entirely possible thathad Papua New Guinea notformally adopted such a change ineducational policy,Vanuatu may well havestuck with the statusquo by which English and French continued as the sole languages of education. The Association deCoopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT) isan international organisationwhich is similar in function tothe Commonwealthof Nations,in thatboth represent groupings ofpolitically,culturally, ethnically andlinguisti- callydiverse nationsthat have in commona link throughshared colonial history withthe United Kingdom andFrance respectively, alongwith a sharedlinguistic inheritance fromthose two countries. Vanuatu is one ofa very smallnumber of polities– alongwith Canada – whichbelong toboththe anglophone Common- wealthof Nationsand the francophoneACCT. 37 While the ACCThasno influence atall on national policy withregard to Bislama or any of the local vernaculars,membership ofthe organisationdoes act as a reminder tothe Vanuatugovernment that both English andFrench haveconstitutionally equal Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 status. Such factorswere perhaps aconsiderationin someaspects of the ombudsman’s 1996report, which Early (1999) criticised as placing undue emphasison the questionof ensuring exactparity between English andFrench, while playing down(or ignoring) otherimportant language issuesin the country.Office ofthe Ombudsman(1996: 1) notesthat a significantamount of work on the reportto parliamenton the observanceof multilingualismin thatyear was carried out by a Canadianvolunteer whohad worked previously in Vanuatu’s Language Services Department.Given Canada’s nationalpreoccupation with ensuring paritybetween English andFrench, andthe neglect, in comparison,of itsindige- The Language Situation in Vanuatu 115

nouslanguages, this kind ofbias in the published ombudsman’s reportis perhaps not too surprising.

Language Maintenance and Prospects

Language transmission Predictionshave been madein print thatlarge numbers oflanguages in the Pacific,including Vanuatu,have a grimfuture. Krauss,in Hale et al. (1992: 6) arguesthat as many as 50% of the languagesspoken in the worldtoday should be regardedas moribund.Mü hlhä usler (1987:6) argueswith specific reference to the Pacific that: contactswith outside colonial powers have had such a traumaticeffect on the ecologyof mostPacific speech communitiesthat the languageshave either changed very rapidly or disappeared altogether. So severe arethe structuralchanges to thoselanguages that have survived, he argues, that: ...the grammaticaladjustment that is encountered in mostPacific languagesthat have come under the influence ofexpatriatemissions and educationsystems is hardly less serious than language deathitself. (Mühlhä usler, 1987: 16) Mühlhä usler seemsto be arguing thatthose Pacific languages that have survived the colonialonslaught are little more than indigenous relexificationsof European structuralpatterns, and that this structural invasion of vernacularspeech patternsrepresents avery seriousthreat to afairnumber ofapparentlyfunction- ing indigenous languages (Mühlhä usler, 1996). Speaking ofthe linguistic situationin Oceania,Dixon (1991) attempts to indi- cate which specific languages of Oceania are under threat: The tragicsaga of language extinctionwhich hasswept across Australia is likely toextend intoother parts of this region during the twenty-first century. An optimisticprediction is that of these c.1,980languages perhaps 200will be spoken in AD2200(some linguists would prefer afigure of twenty or thirty). (Dixon, 1991: 230) He statesthat every language withfewer than10,000 speakers is at risk of extinc-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 tionin the medium term(Dixon, 1991:231). On current population figures, this coversall but one ofthe 80activelyspoken languagesin Vanuatu.He alsostates thatlanguages with less than 1000 speakers are ‘ severely’at risk.Based on the figures in Table 3,thiswould mean that only about40 ofthe 80activelyspoken languages of Vanuatu are out of immediate danger. There clearlyhas been somelossof languagesin Vanuatusince initialcontact withEuropeans in the firsthalf ofthe 19thcentury, andsome other languages areclearlymoribund today,as described in thefollowing section.However, of thoselanguages which arecurrently being activelypassed on toanew genera- tionof children whogrow up monolingualin thatlanguage until they are exposed tolanguages of wider communication,it is much moredifficult to 116 Current Issues in Language Planning

agree withsuggestions that the languagesshould also be consideredas moribund. Forone thing,it is obviouslyoversimplistic to takeraw population figures on their ownasevidence oflanguage viability.What we need topay attentionto is notthe number of speakersthat a language has,but the range of contextsin which itsspeakers regularly makeuse ofthat language. The language of Aneityum in southernVanuatu, for example, hasonly about900 speakers. However,apart from a smallsettlement of people fromneighbouring Futuna, where adifferent language isspoken, the locallanguage isused by allgenera- tionsof Aneityumese forpractically all daily spoken functions,as well assome writtenfunctions. This language hasfar fewer speakersthan the Ma orilanguage of New Zealand,which currently hastens of thousandsof nativespeakers. However,intergenerational transmission of Ma orihas been the exception rather thanthe rule since the 1950s,with the resultthat native speakers of the language are rapidly increasing in average age. Realthreats in thefuture totheviabilityof smalllanguages suchas thatof Aneityum canbeenvisaged,however. If scientific predictionsaboutrising sea levels associated withglobal warming turn out to be correct,some coastal areaswould become uninhabitable. Some communities mayneed toberelo- cated,and this may put somelanguages atrisk,particula rly ifthey haveto moveto anotherisland. However, even relocationneed notmeanthe end ifa communityisrelocated as acommunity.Forinstance, there areabout 500 people whooriginatefrom Maatvillage onSoutheastAmbrym whorelocated toland close to Port Vila in the 1950s,and they havemaintain ed their language in their new location,andare successfu lly passingit on to the following generations. Introduceddiseases resulted in the lossof somelanguages in Vanuatuin the 19thcentury, andthe samecould happen again.The possible spreadof HIV/ AIDS, which iscurrently havinga majordemographic impact in partsof Africa, couldalso easily devastate small languages in acountrysuch as Vanuatu. To date,however, Vanuatu is one ofthe few countriesin the worldwhich has not reporteda single caseof infection,though itis predicted thatif itdid establisha foothold,the epidemiological patterncould be expected tomirrorthat of Africa where the infection isspread primarily through heterosexual contact (as is also beginning to take place in Papua New Guinea). While itis not difficult tosee why people mightbe tempted topredict large-scalelanguage shiftin the nottoo distant future in Vanuatu,I wouldargue

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 thatwe shouldexercise cautionin generalising fromwhat has already happened withAustralian languages to this rather different situation.What is really needed toassessthe future viabilityof languagesin Vanuatuis demographic evidence, alongwith detailed studies of language use (andtrends of usage) in individual speech communities.What I wouldlike todo now is to examine in asmuch detail aspossible the situationregarding language maintenancein Vanuatu,on the basis ofquestionsrelating to language in the 1989census, as well asmy ownobserva- tionsas to how languages are actually used in thismultilingual nation. In the personalquestionnaire in the 1989census in Vanuatu,there wasone questionthat explicitly relatedto language ability,and this was worded as follows: The Language Situation in Vanuatu 117

Wanem lanwis yu save, talem olgeta we yu save? 38

Eni lokol lanwis YES NO Bislama YES NO Inglis YES NO Franis YES NO Nara lanwis blong nara kaontri YES NO

The published reportof thiscensus tabulates the responsesto this question accordingto local government and urban areasin Table B61(reproduced as Table 6),while Table B62(reproduced asTable 7)breaks the figures down according to age and sex. Iwouldargue onthe basisof these figures thatthere isclearly no immediate prospectof large-scalelanguage shifttaking place in Vanuatu,despite the very smallaverage size of individual languages.These figures indicatethat 97.4% of people overall age groupsliving in ruralareas answered that they couldspeak a locallanguage. Atthe sametime,the figures suggestthat total language security cannotnecessarily be assured.Comparing both rural males and females across the three age groupstabulated, the proportionof vernacular speakers drops

Table 6 Percentage ofresidents aged six years and overwho couldspeak various languages (Office of Statistics 1991:127)

Local Bislama Eng or Fr Bislama Bislama Bislama Total language only only or other and and Eng and number only foreign lg English French French Rural Banks/Torres 9.1 0.1 0.0 39.68.9 1.9 4,631 Santo/Malo 10.7 0.4 0.0 27.312.9 2.0 14,739 Ambae/Maewo9.0 0.1 0.1 44.09.5 1.9 8,754 Pentecost 20.6 0.1 0.0 28.616.7 2.8 9,037 Malakula 3.9 0.3 0.0 34.223.2 2.1 15,348 Ambrym 4.4 0.3 0.0 41.322.2 3.8 5,871 Paama 13.9 0.1 0.0 40.815.3 2.6 1,401 Epi 2.7 4.4 0.0 44.39.3 1.5 2,922

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Shepherds 8.0 0.0 0.0 45.317.0 3.2 3,151 Efate 1.9 0.3 0.1 56.225.6 7.5 9,372 Tafea 30.3 0.0 0.0 22.310.3 1.7 17,744 Total rural 12.5 0.3 0.0 34.915.9 2.7 92,970 Urban Santo 0.3 1.2 0.3 50.032.1 8.5 5,538 Vila 0.3 0.3 1.6 60.235.8 15.6 15,575 Total urban 0.3 0.6 1.2 57.534.9 13.7 21,113 Vanuatu 10.2 0.4 0.3 39.119.4 4.8 114,083 118 Current Issues in Language Planning

Table 7 Percentage ofresidents aged sixyears and overwho couldspeak different languages, by age, sex and area of enumeration (Office of Statistics 1991:127) Local lgBislama English French Other lgTotal number Rural Males 6–14 yrs 93.9 67.0 37.7 19.6 0.2 15,515 15–59 yrs 98.1 92.6 44.1 20.6 0.7 27,954 60– yrs 100.0 89.8 17.2 4.2 0.6 3,934 Total 96.9 84.0 39.8 18.9 0.6 47,403 Females 6–14 yrs 94.0 65.3 36.6 20.8 0.3 14,093 15–59 yrs 98.9 81.3 33.1 17.2 0.4 28,383 60– yrs 99.6 60.2 6.4 2.4 0.3 3,091 Total 97.4 74.9 32.4 17.3 0.4 45,567 Urban Males 6–14 yrs 76.6 93.6 48.3 37.9 1.8 2,507 15–59 yrs 84.4 94.1 66.8 37.4 5.6 8,336 60– yrs 65.8 77.3 38.1 25.5 8.5 365 Total 82.3 93.4 61.7 37.1 4.8 11,208 Females 6–14 yrs 78.3 92.0 50.6 37.7 2.0 2,299 15–59 yrs 83.8 92.4 60.6 33.5 4.7 7,330 60– yrs 65.6 77.1 23.6 24.3 5.1 276 Total 82.1 91.9 57.2 34.2 4.1 9,905

from100% (or very nearly 100%)among the oldestage group, toone ortwo percentage pointslower among the 15–59 yearolds, and it drops by afurther four or five percentage points among 6–14 year olds. These kinds ofdifferences aremuch morenoticeable when age andsex groups arecompared between ruraland urban areas.While 98.1%of ruralmales between 15and59 speak alocallanguage, asdo98.9% of ruralfemales, the corre-

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 sponding figures forurban malesand females dropto 84.4%and 83.8% percent respectively. Amongyoung urban girls,vernacular ability drops to 78.3%, while only 76.6%of urban boysspeak avernacular.These figures aremuch lowerthan the comparablefigures forrural girls and boys, which are94%and93.9% respectively. Although there isa noticeabledrop in vernacularability among all age groups andwith both sexes in the urban centres,Vanuatu society is still overwhelmingly rural.The factthat over 80% of the totalpopulation lives in ruralvillages is with- outa doubtwhat ensures the continued maintenanceof localvernaculars around the country.At the sametime, however, the proportionof the populationliving in the townshas grown steadily since the figure often per centreported in the The Language Situation in Vanuatu 119

censusof 1967.This had increased to 14.2% by 1979,and had reached 18.4% in 1989 (Office of Statistics, 1991: 21). If thisurbanising trendwere toaccelerate, or even be simply maintained,then perhaps we couldexpect there tobe agradual,but continual,decrease in the overallproportion of vernacularspeakers in Vanuatu.One constrainingfactor againstlarge-scale urbanisation is economic. With few resourcesin Vanuatu apartfrom what grows on the landand lives in the surroundingseas, it is difficult toimagine the kind of uncontrolledurbanisation in Vanuatuthat we find in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Acontinuing trendtowards urbanisation would have the potentialultimately toput certainvernaculars at risk,especially thosethat are spoken inthoseareas providing the greatestinput forurban immigration.Office ofStatistics(1991: 33) indicatesthat the localgovernment areas contributing the greatestproportion of their populationto urban driftare Paama (with anannual net out-migrationrate of4.41%) and the Shepherds (with anannualrate of 2.13%).These islandsrepre- sentthe only partsof the countrywhere demographicprojections point to a slight decline in population. Thishas the potentialto affect the future viabilityin the long termof twoof Vanuatu’s 80languages: Paamese and Namakir. The future ofa number of smallerlanguages in otherlocal government areas could also be threatenedby urban driftif out-migrationwas concentrated in particularlocations, rather than being uniform throughoutthe localgovernment area. The Paamaand Shepherds localgovernment areas are to someextent specialcases, however, as these are smalland unusually densely populated islands.The resulting landshortages meanthat subsistence agriculture cannot support the entire population.There is, asaresult,strong pressure foryoung people tomove to the townsin searchof paid work. Atthe sametime that the proportionof vernacularspeakers shows signs of dropping amongyounger people, especially in the towns,there isa significant increasein the proportionof young people claimingto speak Bislama.Only 67% ofrural boys and 65.3% of ruralgirls answered that they couldspeak Bislama, while the correspondingfigures fortown-dwellers were 93.6%and 92% respectively.These figures maybe interpreted asmeaning thata shiftfrom vernaculars in the direction of Bislama is currently in progress in Vanuatu. The abilityto speak Bislamain Vanuatuis, however, an age-graded phenome- non.This means that while significantnumbers ofrural youngsters did not reportan abilityto speak Bislama,they aredestined toacquire this ability. The

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 majordifference between urban andrural patterns is simply thattown dwellers learntheir Bislamaearlier thantheir ruralcounterparts, but justabout everyone ends up speaking the language by their teenage years.An increasein the ability tospeak Bislamaon itsown shouldin anycase not automatically be interpreted asmeaning thatlanguage shiftis taking place, as it is logically possible for vernacular/Bislamabilingualism tobe stableover an extended period oftime. There are,after all, many well-established patternsof stablediglossic relation- ships between languages elsewhere in the world. The firstcolumn in Table 7setsout the proportionsof people whocan speak a localvernacular. The difference between these figures and100% represents the proportionof the populationthat speaks no Melanesian vernacular.These 120 Current Issues in Language Planning

Table 8 Non-vernacular speakers Rural Urban Males 6–14 yrs 6.1 23.4 15–59 yrs 1.9 15.6 60– yrs 0.0 34.2 Total 3.1 17.7 Females 6–14 yrs 6.0 21.7 15–59 yrs 1.1 15.6 60– yrs 0.4 34.2 Total 2.6 17.9

figures aresetout in Table 8.These figures maylooksuperficially disturbing for the long-term future ofvernacularsin Vanuatu,especially given the 23.5%of urban boysand 21.7% of urban girlswho speak novernacular. However, of the urban populationof Vanuatu,10.1% of the totalis of European,Asian and other PacificIslander descent, and we wouldnot expect these people tospeak alocal vernacularin anycase. On the basisof the published populationand percent- ages,there shouldbe 3757people abovethe age ofsixin urban centreswho speak noVanuatuvernacular, of whom3378 should be Melanesians,which means that 17.8%of the totalnumber ofMelanesians in townspeak novernacular. Nation- wide,however, only aboutfive per centof allMelanesians over the age ofsix speak no vernacular. Thiscompares favourably with figures compiled justbefore independence in alinguistic survey.In 1980,a survey of750individuals nationwide found that 7.5%of the totalhad learned Bislamaand no vernacular as their firstlanguage, andthat, as we mighthave expected, there were greaterconcentrations of first-language Bislamaspeakers in the urban ratherthan rural areas (Charpentier &Tryon,1982: 151). The twosets of figures arenotnecessarily strictly compara- ble asCharpentier &Tryongave no indication as to the age groupsthat they surveyed, though itcertainly does not seem thatthe period 1980–89 saw any drasticincrease in the proportionof first-language Bislamaspeakers at the national level. Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 More recently, asurvey ofurban youthconducted in the mid-1990sby the VanuatuCultural Centre revealed that88.8% of the youthof PortVila indicated thatthey knowtheir vernacularwell, even if only relativelysmall numbers use thatlanguage astheir mainlanguage ofcommunicationin town(Charpentier, 1999).Interestingly, the figure of11.2% of young PortVila residentswho must be presumed tobe first-language speakersof Bislamais much lowerthan the corre- sponding figure of23.4%which derives fromthe 1989census. My suspicionis thatthe latersurvey ismore likely toaccuratelyreflect young people’s language abilities,and that the censusfigures were exaggeratedby possible confusion between the questionthat was asked, ‘ Whatlanguages can you speak?’and the The Language Situation in Vanuatu 121

questionthat people mayhave thought they were being asked,i.e. ‘ What languages do you speak?’. However,a shiftfrom vernaculars to Bislamais, in fact,not the only possible interpretationof the censusfigures. Correspondingto the dropin vernacular ability,there isalso an increase in the statedability to speak English orFrench. Thus,while only 37.7%of ruralboys and 36.6% of ruralgirls claimed to speak English,the correspondingfigures forthe townsare 48.3% and 50.6% respectively.Similarly, while only 19.6%of ruralboys and 20.8% of rural girls claimed tospeak French, the urban figures increasedto 37.9% and 37.7% respectively. On the basisof these figures alone,it would be possible toargue thata shiftaway fromvernaculars is instead taking place in the directionof English andFrench. (Equally possible,of course,is the interpretationthat there isa shiftin the direction of English/Bislama and French/Bislama bilingualism.) One pointthat does not emerge fromeither the published censusfigures or surveysof language use in townsis the factthat there aresomerural areas where Bislamahas become the dominantmedium ofexchange. Thisshould not neces- sarilybe interpreted asmeaning thatlocal vernaculars in these ruralareas are being abandonedin favourof Bislama, as the situationsthat I amreferring to typicallyinvolve long-term settlersfrom other islands on plantations or in peri-urban areas.We therefore find Bislamabeing spoken toasignificantextent in plantationor othermixed communitiesin areassuch as Tismanon Malakula, Aoreand parts of Malo,and in the village ofSaamaon NorthEfate, as well asthe peri-urban areasof southern Efate and south-eastern Espiritu Santo. However, even in along-established andmixed peri-urban communitysuch as Blacksands nearPort Vila, where Bislamais a majormedium ofexchange, there isstill extensive use of a variety of different local languages. Language shiftis in factnot taking place in Vanuatuin the directionof either English orFrench either, but itis difficult toreachthis conclusion solely on the basisof the censusfigures because ofthe waythat the language questionwas formulated.Respondents were allowedno way of distinguishing levels of competence indifferent languages,as simple ‘yes’or ‘no’answers were required. Havingobserved actual language use in Vanuatu,it is obvious to me thatwhile many people can speak English andFrench, especially in the towns,they seldom actually do speak these languages,except in certainrestricted contexts. Typically, people use English andFrench inside schoolclassrooms (but they often speak Bislamaor alocallanguage in the playground,despite widespreadschool rules prohibiting this).English andFrench areoften used when writing,often even

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 when writingletters to closefamily members,or one’ s owndiary. People who havebeen toschool will often saythatthey find iteasier to read something written in English orFrench thanin Bislama(as written Bislama is not taught in Vanuatuschools). Ni-Vanuatu workingin servicepositions in town(e.g. in stores,restaurants) will alsooften use their knowledge of spoken English or French if they are serving somebody who is obviously from overseas. The kinds ofcontextsjust described involve only arelatively smallpropor- tionof verbalinteractions in Vanuatu.Under normalcircumstances ,itwould be very rareindeed tofind oneNi-Vanuatu speaking toanotherNi-Vanuatu in English orFrench. Speaking Bislamaor alocalvernacular is the normamong Ni-Vanuatu,to the pointwhere Ni-Vanuatu whodo use English orFrench with 122 Current Issues in Language Planning

eachother are liable tobe chastisedbecause olimekem flasblong olgeta ‘they are showingoff’ . Alternatively,people makeuse ofmetropolitanlanguages in order tojoke withpeople. OnErromango, for example, Ihave never heard two Erromangansconduct a conversationin English. Although primaryschool children arerequired touse English atschool, this rule isregularly flouted, andI havenever heardof anychildren whodo not immediately abandon English awayfromschool, even withtheir ownteachers.I knowof one Erromanganwho occasionallyattempts to use English in aconversationalway, but thisis always greeted withhowls of laughter,which ishis desired effect anywayas he isvery much apracticaljoker. Forone Erromanganto speak English toanother Erromanganis much the sameas baring one’s bottomin public (which this particularcharacter is also wont to do):it is hilarious precisely because itbreaks all the accepted rules. People whoare very drunk in Vanuatumay sometimeslapse into English (or Bislama)but thisis a manifestationof whatethnographers refer toas ‘wildman behaviour’(Haiman, 1979: 40). This is a toleratedway of allowingmales to let off steam,which may also include punching orkicking walls,knocking down bananaplants, or causing fights. One iseffectively lessaccountable for one’ s behaviourafterwards because, in speaking English (orBislama), one isnot behaving as a member of one’s home community. Thus,while the censusfigures maybe contrivedto makeit look as if English andFrench represent threatsto Vanuatu vernaculars, if there isa threatening language, then itis Bislama, and I donot view thisthreat as a seriousone. However,there isone aspectof the linguisticdemography of Vanuatu which is notrecoverable in anyway from either the published censusfigures orany surveysof language use in towns,and that involves the extent towhich certain vernacularsmay be acquiringadditional speakers from other vernaculars, without actually threatening the language as a whole. Forinstance, on the islandof Epi there isone village where the Bierebo language iscurrently shifting toLewo,which is another language spoken onthe island(Early, 1994: 31). In allremaining Bierebo-speaking villages,the language appearsto be stable,and there areno signs that outside this single village Lewois likely toreplace Bierebo. In yet othersituations, a locallanguage maybe spreading intoother areas, though only asasecondlanguage, withno sign thatthis introducedlanguage will replace the originallanguages. For instance, Paamese isbeing spoken by increasingnumbers ofpeople fromneighbouring northern Epi andsouth-eastern Amrym as a secondlanguage, while relativelyfew

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Paamese speakers ever learn the languages of the neighbouring islands. Despite the evident vitalityof mostof the languagesof Vanuatu,I wouldnot wantmy claimsto be takenas the basisfor adopting a blaséattitude towards these communities.Linguistic ecologies are very delicatethings, which canbe very easilydisturbed, often withoutthe realisationof members ofthese commu- nitiesuntil the change isirreversible. Urbanisation,immigration, emigration and educationcan all interact within the spaceof asingle generationto cutthe lines of linguistic transmission. AsGrace Molisa said at a conference organisedaround the theme Pacific Languages:Directions forthe Future in Vila in 1984,people in Vanuatuhave a very pragmaticapproach to language, viewing languagessimply astoolsfor commu- The Language Situation in Vanuatu 123

nication.This means that governments in Vanuatusee otherareas as having higher prioritythan the maintenanceof languageswhich do not appear to be under anyparticular threat. These arein factpan-Melanesian attitudes,so we shouldnot assume that there areno language problemsin Melanesia,but that they maysimply havenot yet been recognised.Grace Molisa specifically commented:‘ Itisrather like silentdiseases – you donot know that you aresick until itis too late’(Pacific LanguagesUnit, 1984: 12).However, I wouldargue that the languagesof Vanuatu are, for the mostpart, in areasonablyhealthy statefor the immediateand intermediate future, despite the alarmistpredictions of Mühlhä usler and Dixon.

Language death and language revival AsI havealready indicated, a number of languageshave already become extinctin Vanuatusince initialcontact with Europeans in the 19thcentury brought diseasesto which localpeople hadno immunity. Those 20 languagesin Vanuatuwhich havebecome extinct,or which arecurrently moribund,are set out in Table 9.

Table 9 Extinct and moribund languages Language name Island Status Aore Santo extinct Aveteian Malakula extinct? Bieria Epi moribund Iakanaga Epi extinct Ianigi Epi extinct Khatbol Malakula moribund Langalanga Malakula moribund Livara Epi extinct Marakhus Malakula moribund Matanavat Malakula extinct? Mbwenelang Malakula moribund Nasarian Malakula moribund Nati Malakula moribund Navwien Malakula moribund

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 Nisvai Malakula moribund Litzlitz Malakula moribund Surua Hole Malakula moribund Orkon Ambrym moribund Revaliu Epi extinct Sörsörian Malakula moribund South Maewo Maewo extinct Ura Erromango moribund Utaha Erromango extinct 124 Current Issues in Language Planning

Populationsin someparts of the countrydropped dramaticallyover very shortperiods as aresultof introduceddiseases, and the originaldistribution of languageswas sometimesseriously affected. OnErromango,for example, the populationdropped froman estimatedoriginal 6000 to below 400during the period 1850–1930. As aresultof thismassive demographic dislocation, the last speaker oftheUtahalanguage died in1954,and there istoday just a handful of elderly speakersof Ura. 39 Itis possible thatthere were someother languages spoken onErromangowhich became extincteven earlier,though in theabsence of documentedinformation on these linguistic varieties,it is impossible to knowif these represented separatelanguages, or ifthey were simply regional variantsof one of the otherlanguages to which Ihavealready referred (Crowley, 1997b). Partsof Malakula have also undergone massivepopulation loss, with some languageshaving again become extinctor moribund. An additionalconsider- ationon Malakula is that prior to European contact,there wasa considerable populationin the interior.Much ofthispopulation has dispersed toavarietyof coastallocations, especially overthe lastfew generations.This has resulted in somelanguages retaining only smalland very widely dispersed populations withinthe ancestrallanguage area,while significantnumbers ofspeakershave nowbecome linguisticminorities in avarietyof coastalvillages where quite different languagesare spoken. While the totalnumber ofspeakers of such languagesmay be reasonablyhigh, the speech communitieshave effectively become discontiguous,possibly giving these languagesthreatened status within a couple of generations. Forexample, the language ofthe Lendamboiarea of the interiorof southern Malakulawas spoken by about100 people in1989in their ancestralarea, though asomewhatlarger number ofspeakersof this language were living in anumber ofdifferent villagesalong the western,southern and eastern coasts of the island. In someof these villages,Lendamboi speakers were in amajority,while in other cases,they hadmoved to avillage where they represented aminority.Given that there aremany pressures on the interiordwellers tomoveto the coast,unless speakersof this language canestablish a clearidentity in anew location,the language couldeasily be threatened,and some of the one-time neighbours ofthis language have already disappeared, or become moribund. Language revivalis not considered as a majorissue in anyof these cases. Some regret istypically expressed locallyat the lossof alanguage, andone occasionallyhears suggestions about how nice itwould be if people could

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 speak amoribund language morewidely. However,there hasnever been any seriousattempt at a communitylevel topromote a language revival programmefor any moribund orextinctVanuatu language. Itistherefore difficultto imagine anyofthoselanguagesset out inTable 9survivingfor more than anothergeneration. Itis interesting tonote,however, that individual action can have some degree ofsuccessin delaying the eventual demise ofsome languages in thiskind ofsitu- ation.The Na tilanguage ofMalakula was originally spoken in the areaknown as Wilemp inthe interiorof the south-westerncorner of the islanduntil aninfluenza epidemic devastatedthe areain the 1920scausing massive depopulation. In the Nati-speaking area,there were very few survivorsof thisepidemic. Bythe first The Language Situation in Vanuatu 125

quarterof the 20thcentury, allthat were left ofthe originalspeakers in their ancestralarea were three oldmen andtheir immediatefamilies (Crowley, 1998: 102–3). One ofthe three died in the bush in hisancestral area, and his son now speaks anothercoastal language. Anotherdied onthe coastand his sons now speak anothercoastal language. However,the four sonsof the thirdman stillmaintain anactivespeaking abilityin Na ti.All four brotherscurrently live closeto each otherin coastalvillages and they use Na tiamongst themselves. However, only one ofthe brothershas attempted to passa knowledge ofthe language ontohis ownchildren. Hiswife grew up speaking adifferent language, but by exposure she hasbeen able tolearnNa ti,40 andthis is now what the family speaksat home. They havefive children whocan also understand Na tiandthey alsospeak itin the home,though in the village they speak the language ofthe restof the children. However,unless these children growup withthe samecommitment to maintainingNa ti,and are as successfulas their fatherin passingit ontotheir spouseswhen they growup, andbetween them,also to their children, Na ti clearly has a bleak future as a distinct linguistic tradition. While somefurther language lossin Vanuatuis inevitable, itshould be pointed outthat in nocase is anyindigenous language in anyobvious immediate danger ofbeing replaced by Bislamaor either ofthe metropolitanlanguages. Wherever language shiftis under way,it isalways some other local language thatis the replacing language, andnot one ofthe nationallingua francas.For instance,Early (1994: 17) reports that the Bierialanguage ofEpi isthreatened withextinction, though the currentgeneration of speakersis not moving to Bislama,and they arecertainly not speaking English orFrench. The language thatis replacing Bieriais Nakanamanga, which represents arecent immigrant intrusion to Epi from the Shepherd Islands to the south.

Future directions Iview the linguistic future ofVanuatuwith a mixtureof optimismand pessi- mism.I amoptimisticthat most of the 80indigenous languageswill continue to be activelypassed on to future generationsfor a considerabletime to come. While substantiallanguage losshas taken place in someparts of Vanuatu,this happened forthe mostpart in the 19thand early 20th centuries atatimewhen localpopulations were plummeting. Since the populationstabilised and subsequently began aperiod ofnormal demographic increase after the 1920s,very few, if any,languages appear to havebecome unviable. Mostlanguages today

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 areactually gaining speakersas the populationof Vanuatugrows at one ofthe higher annualrates of population increase in the world.If the EducationMaster Planthat is currently under considerationis successfully implemented, itis to be hoped thatincreasing numbers ofyounger people will become literatein their own languages, along with English, French and Bislama as at present. Some ofthe smallervernaculars of Vanuatu would certainly be vulnerable if there wasa substantialincrease in the extent ofurban drift,if increasednumbers ofoutsiders married into these communities,if there were majordemographic devastationdue todisease, or if communitieswere madediscontiguous by degradationof the physicalenvironment. In mostcases, however, these repre- sentworst-case scenarios rather than certainties. In anycase, it must be remem- 126 Current Issues in Language Planning

bered thathuman beings arenotgiant pandas. Pandas are presumably unaware oftheir endangered statusand so do nottake steps in responseto their situation, while humanbeings areable tomake choices within a range ofoptions that are availableto them, and that includes whichlanguage (orlanguages) they are going to speak. Given thatnumerous factors interrelate in avarietyof complexways in any linguisticecology, it is of courseextremely difficult, even impossible,to make absolutelycertain predictions about what the future will holdfor the languages ofVanuatu.Some havepredicted the worstin termsof the lossof possiblyall of the locallanguages, though thosewho have expressed the loudestviews have almostwithout exception hadno direct contact with any of these languages spoken withinthese localcommunities, and they aretypically quite unawareof boththe kinds oflinguisticchoices that are made in Vanuatu’s different societies, andof the kinds ofattitudesthat Ni-Vanuatu holdto their ownlanguages, to Bislama, and to the two metropolitan languages. Despite myguarded optimism,I donot want my wordsto be interpreted as meaning thatthe statusquo should be allowedto prevail. I regardthe almost complete lackof response from any government to repeated callsfor action to activelysupport languages other than English orFrench since independence in 1980with considerable concern. In 1984,in responseto a workshoporganised jointly by the Universityof the South Pacificand the Ministryof Education,and run by John Lynch (then ofthe Universityof PapuaNew Guinea), withthe aimof producing awritingsystem and a setof introductorycurriculum materialsin the Whitesandslanguage ofTanna, the Office ofthe Prime Ministerat the time responded thatthe resulting recommendationsfor a pilotvernacular education project ‘be followed up in order to realise them soonest’. Thisinitial enthusiasm appears to have immediately been completely forgotten.Recent moves to incorporate local languages into the formaleducation systemas partof the EducationMaster Plan offer somehope, but ifthisproject is carriedout hurriedly andwithout proper attentionto detailand without appro- priately trainedstaff – andsuch a scenariois not impossible to envisage –itis likely thatlocal communities will be completely turned off anypossibility for vernacular early education for some generations to come. Anotherconcern is that todate,very few Ni-Vanuatu havereceived thekind oftrainingin linguistic issuesat asufficiently advancedlevel toallowthe kind ofdebate thatis needed ata nationallevel toassist in the formulationof a nationalconsensus about what is, or is not, desirable in termsof language Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 policy.Ideally, thisaccount of the language planning situationin Vanuatu shouldhave been writtenby aNi-Vanuatu whois involved in suchactivities. However,as thismonograph has shown,language planning hashad sucha low priorityin thishighly diverse countrythat there isno centrally organised or publicly mandatedand recognised language planning agency orlanguage policy.Those language planning activitieswhich dotakeplace aresodiffuse in termsof the institutionsand range ofactivitiesinvolved that no Ni-Vanuatu haveever been encouraged toseek higher academicdegrees inthisarea. 41 For thisreason, this account has been writtenby anoutsiderprimarily as areference documentfor other outsiders. The Language Situation in Vanuatu 127

Acknowledgements Thanksare due tothe followingfor the informationthat they haveprovided, orhelpful commentson earlier draftsof this work: Richard B. BaldaufJr., Robert Early,Robert Kaplan, John Lynch, Anne Naupa,Jean-Pierre Nirua.Final responsibility for all conclusions, of course, rests with the author.

Correspondence Any correspondenceshould be directedto Dr Terry Crowley,Department of General &Applied Linguistics,University of Waikato,Private Bag 3105, Hamil- ton, New Zealand (e-mail [email protected]).

Notes 1.The prefix ni- derives from awidely distributed preposition in localvernaculars that means ‘of’. 2.A traditional non-addictive narcoticthat is now becoming trendy among westerners as a natural health product. 3.There is amore widely quoted figure of105 languages (e.g.Tryon, 1976),though Lynch and Crowley (in press) argue thatthe evidence forsuch ahigh figure is atthe moment somewhat inconclusive. In fact,the latter source cites 81actively spoken languages onthe apparently mistaken assumption thatLitzlitz is still actively spoekn. 4.‘ The Republicshall protectthe different locallanguages, which are partof the national heritage, and may declare one ofthem asanational language’(The Constitution of Vanuatu, Article 3:2.). 5.Formerly, the Gilbert Islands, which were partof the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands. 6.‘ We, we, we are happy to say that We, we, we are people of Vanuatu.’ 7.While the war had little effecton the vernaculars ofVanuatu, it did have major culturaland politicaleffects. In particular,Ni-Vanuatu for the first time sawAfrican American troupsperforming duties thatthey had previously assumed couldonly be performed byEuropeans, planting seeds ofdoubt about the legitimacy ofcolonial control in their own country bythe British and the French. The seemingly unlimited resources ofthe Americans alsoled tothe growth ofthe John Frum ‘cargocult’ on Tanna, which is still activetoday. This movement is based on the idea thatwhen a person known bythis name returns, vastamounts ofmaterial wealth –which has until now been hoarded illicitly byEuropeans –will comespewing forth from the local volcano. 8.By ‘relatively recent’, Imean since around 1300AD, asthe remaining languages ofthe country result from much earlier migrations. 9.The census questionnaires in the 1989and 1999censuses were distributed toenumera- tors in Bislama. In rural areas,where enumerators were generally chosen from local areaswhere they spoke the locallanguage, the questions were typically administered

Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 through the vernacular.Where the enumerator did not speak the locallanguage, the questions were normally asked in Bislama. With the very small –and predominantly urban– expatriatepopulation, enumerators were presumably chosen fortheir ability to administer the census questions in English or French if the need arose. 10.The John Frum movement referred toin note 7alsoinvolves syncretism between traditional spirituality, amillennial interpretation ofChristianity and modern materi- alism. 11.In the Christian tradition, ofcourse, the associationof eggs with Easter is adirect continuation of very old fertility celebrations. 12.Many ofthese writing systems were imperfect in avariety ofways, and more recent work has sometimes involved improvements to these older spelling systems. 13.Located about halfway between Vanuatuand New Zealand, this is now politically part of Australia. 128 Current Issues in Language Planning

14.In fact,Mota-speaking graduates camefrom anumber ofislands in the south-eastern parts of the Solomon Islands as well. 15.At most, asermon will bedelivered in Erromangan on the basisof a few headings written on asheet ofpaper,most likely in Bislama, possibly in English, butprobably not in Erromangan. 16.Quite apartfrom the widely distributed Nyu Laef hymnals, 20,000copies of the Baebol longBislama were produced in 1996.That allows foran average ofone Bislama Bible for every ten people in the country. 17.There is aregular Mass in English in town fora small number ofanglophone Catho- lics, though asignificant proportion ofthose attending are likely tobe expatriates from Australia,New Zealand, other PacificIslands orfrom further afield. For the most part, Ni-Vanuatufind it very difficultto conceive ofan expatriate Catholic whose first language is anything but French. 18.The planas it is currently formulated allows localcommunities either toadopt initial vernacular literacy or toretain the existing system thatoperates only through metropolitanlanguages. There is, however, aninherent difficulty with this kind ofchoice as the acceptanceof universal eight years ofprimary educationis tied toaccepting initial vernacular literacy, which would betantamountto having two‘ universal’systems of education. 19.There are several ‘international’schools, which caterpredominantly forthe children ofexpatriates, where Spanish and Japanesehave reportedly been offered aselectives. 20.In fact,even since beforeindependence, the main francophone-dominated political grouping, known officiallyas Union desPartis Modé ré s ,is generally referred topublicly (even byits own leaders) asUMP,which stands forthe English title Union ofModerate Parties. 21.Another possible explanation forthis is thatfrancophones, automaticallybeing speakers ofBislama, receive asubstantive ‘leg-up’to English becauseof the readily perceived similarities between English and Bislama as languages. 22.French speakers from Canadaand other partsof the French-speaking world obviously do have characteristicaccents, but the linguistic models in Vanuatuhave been almost exclusively metropolitan French. 23.In fact,about the only times thatone regularly encounters anglophone Ni-Vanuatu speaking toeachother in English outside the classroom when there are no expatriates present is when under heavy influence of alcohol. 24.The increased density ofthe telephone network around the country, however, does seem tohave brought aboutsome reduction in the number ofservice messages broadcast over the radio. 25.‘ Ihear thata senior secretary in the diocese ofVanuatu who is directly involved with official matters to the bishop has got his housekeeper from Torba pregnant.’ 26.In the past,English and French programming has alternated every other day, orthere has been an equal split between the two languages on each individual day. 27.It should benoted, however, thatthe kind ofBislama thattypically appearsin political messages is often heavily laden with English. 28.Despite the proximity ofFiji, there has never been any substantialflow of people of Indian origin to Vanuatu. Downloaded by [Monterey Inst of International Studies] at 22:46 16 December 2013 29.In fact,in the past,when staffin thatdepartment attempted towork withstaffin other government departments todevelop written norms and todevelop terminology in Bislama –under the auspicesof the Komitiblong Bislama (see below)– Language Services staffwere dissuaded bytheir administrative superiors from attending meet- ings and were told that this was ‘not their job’. 30.‘ Ioften listen tothe Bislama news onRadio New Hebrides butsometimes Ido not understand properly becausethe readers use many English words which Ido not know the meaning of.I amaneducated person in town butIamconcerned aboutour parents in the islands who Ibelieve do not understand the Bislama news onthe radio. I say this becauserecently one ofour elders athome asked meaboutthe meaning ofthe word ‘affectem’ which he had heard on the Bislama news on the radio.’ 31.Alternatively, ofcourse, people may becoming tounderstand more ofsuch items than The Language Situation in Vanuatu 129

wasformerly the caseeither through constant exposure or through greater exposure to English in the formal education system. 32.For instance, ParamountChiefs Malvatumauri(1983) spells the word repablik on the cover of this booklet. 33.This term derives from a widely used word in local languages meaning ‘stone’. 34.It is unclear whether this wasdue simply topoliticalinertia, or ifpost-independence governments were reluctant tosanction anindependent body which couldmonitor their activities. Since the appointment ofthe first ombudsman, along series ofreports has been issued which are criticalof the activities ofmany senior people in government. 35.Unfortunately, this association has been moribund since 1996. 36.The same criticism canalso be levelled atthe University ofthe SouthPacific, though there is perhaps more ofanacceptancethat the tradition ofacademic freedom in a university contextgives expatriateacademics greater freedom toparticipate in public debate than non-academics. 37.When the Vanuatugovernment washeaded bythe anglophone Fr Walter Lini in the 1980s,he presented his formalspeech onbehalfof his nation tomembers ofthe association in Bislama, with interpretation provided into French. 38.‘ Whatlanguage(s) do youknow? Saywhat languages youknow? Any locallanguage? Bislama? English? French? Any other language from another country?’ 39.The remaining Erromangan language is alive and well, with its speakers now experi- encing normal demographic increase, and the language has about 1900 speakers. 40.These languages are lexically, phonologically and structurally fairly similar toeach other, making this kind of learning a viable proposition. 41.In fact,the number ofNi-Vanuatuwith any tertiary qualificationsin linguistics is no more than a handful.

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