Language shift in Vanuatu’s 2020 census: Investigation of a national dataset for 250,000 people

Growing concern surrounds the threats faced by Vanuatu’s famous diversity of Indigenouslanguages, with particular attention directed towards the pressure that Bislama exerts as thecountry’s lingua franca. Here, I report the results of exploratory analyses of Vanuatu’s mostrecent national census, leveraging individual-level data for nearly 250,000 people to gauge themagnitude of the shift away from Indigenous languages and identify the factors implicated inthis process. The data reveal that 83.9% of Vanuatu’s population can ‘easily’ speak anIndigenous language and that 74.9% learnt an Indigenous first language. Conversely, 9.6% ofpeople cannot speak an Indigenous language (including 9.4% of Indigenous Ni-Vanuatu), anda severely conservatively-biased estimate shows that Bislama is the first language learnt for atleast 14.2% of the population, including 14.3% of Ni-Vanuatu, with the true figure likely closerto 25%. The youngest generations show considerably poorer Indigenous language abilities andsubstantially greater learning of Bislama as a first language, a pattern consistent with amovement away from Indigenous languages over time. Further patterns that emerge indicatethat Indigenous languages fare best in Vanuatu’s rural areas, in the Area Councils with thesmallest populations, and in the communities that are the least diverse in terms of people’sisland backgrounds. Focusing in on these rural areas, where Bislama likely poses the greatestthreat to Indigenous languages, individuals who have a history of migration, who have accessto modern communication technologies, who live in economically better-off households, andwho live in households without kastom land tenure are less likely to speak an Indigenouslanguage easily and are more likely to learn Bislama as a first language. While strictlycorrelational and non-causal, these exploratory analyses reflect both the vitality of Indigenouslanguages in Vanuatu today and the serious challenges they face from a suite of likelyinterconnected factors.