Austronesian languages...and in western Melanesia to fewer than a thousand. In the central Pacific, where the average number of speakers per language again increases to more than 100,000, the major languages include Fijian, Samoan, and Tongan.
division of PolynesianThe best-known Polynesian languages are Samoan, with about 200,000 speakers; Maori, spoken in New Zealand by about 100,000 persons; Tahitian, with an unknown number of native speakers but widely used as a lingua franca in French Polynesia; and Hawaiian, with only a few remaining native speakers but formerly spoken by perhaps 100,000 persons. Samoan is the national language of Samoa (formerly...
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