The languages of Santo -- Friends of the Museum talk 20.10.2026 -- Dr. Tihomir Rangelov (MPI-EVA)

This talk was part of the Friends of the Museum (National Museum of Vanuatu) series. It is about the linguistic diversity of Santo, Vanuatu's largest island, which is also linguistically severely understudied. New data show that there are more languages and dialects on Santo than previously known. More information about the larger project, which includes a new linguistic survey of Santo with dense sampling, the translation of literacy materials and creating dictionary apps for Santo's languages, the more detailed documentation of the Tanokuk language, can be found in the following publications: Taman, Allan, Sabrina Taman, and Tihomir Rangelov. 2025. ‘Language Ecosystems in Western Santo’. Te Reo 68 (2): 186–245. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18723278 Rangelov, Tihomir. 2026. ‘The Phonological History of 17 varieties in Western Espiritu Santo (Vanuatu)’. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 44: 52–104. https://www.langlxmelanesia.com/_file... The data is also deposited in the online Vanuatu Voices database, which has English-Bislama-lanwis wordlists with audio for over 200 varieties of Vanuatu languages: https://vanuatuvoices.clld.org/langua... More information about the three special issues on Vanuatu languages of the journal Te Reo, including all the articles, free to download and read, can be found here: Vanuatu languages in context: https://nzlingsoc.org/journal/current... Vanuatu languages in action: https://nzlingsoc.org/journal/current... Vanuatu language structures: https://nzlingsoc.org/journal/current... The next COOL conference, which will be held in Port Vila in July 2027: https://cool14.sciencesconf.org/?lang=en