Oceanic languagesThe approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori and Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) languages each have over 100,000 speakers.
FijiFiji (ˈfiːdʒi , fiːˈdʒiː ; Viti, ˈβitʃi; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, Fijī), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about . The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.
Papua New GuineaPapua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; ˈpæp(j)uə...ˈɡɪni,_ˈpɑː-, USˈpɑːpwə-,_ˈpɑːpjə-,_ˈpɑːpə-), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea (Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia (a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia). Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby.
Indigenous AustraliansIndigenous Australians are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in areas within the Australian continent before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples of the Australian mainland and Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islander peoples from the seas between Queensland and Papua New Guinea.
OceaniaOceania (UKˌoʊsiˈɑːniə,ˌoʊʃi-,-ˈeɪn- , USˌoʊʃiˈæniə , -ˈɑːn- ) is a geographical region that is described as a continent in some parts of the world. It includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the center of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of and a population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. Oceania is described as a geographical region in most of the English-speaking world, but outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is described as one of the continents.
Papuan languagesThe Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and East Timor by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world.
SumbaSumba (Soemba-eiland; pulau Sumba), natively also spelt as Humba or Hubba (in Sumba languages) is an Indonesian island (part of the Lesser Sunda Archipelago group) located in the Eastern Indonesia and administratively part of the East Nusa Tenggara provincial territory. Sumba has an area of , and the population was 779,049 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as of mid-2021 was 788,190. To the northwest of Sumba is Sumbawa, to the northeast, across the Sumba Strait (Selat Sumba), is Flores, to the east, across the Savu Sea, is Timor, and to the south, across part of the Indian Ocean, is Australia.
Indigenous people of New GuineaThe indigenous peoples of Western New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, commonly called Papuans, are Melanesians. There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages in New Guinea and neighboring islands: a first wave from the Malay Archipelago perhaps 50,000 years ago when New Guinea and Australia were a single landmass called Sahuland, much later, a wave of Austronesian people from the north who introduced Austronesian languages and pigs about 3,500 years ago.
ZealandiaZealandia (pronounced ziːˈlændiə), also known as Te Riu-a-Māui (Māori) or Tasmantis, is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust in Oceania that subsided after breaking away from Gondwanaland 83–79 million years ago. It has been described variously as a submerged continent, continental fragment, and microcontinent. The name and concept for Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995, and satellite imagery shows it to be almost the size of Australia.
New CaledoniaNew Caledonia (ˌkælᵻˈdoʊniə ; Nouvelle-Calédonie nuvɛl kaledɔni) is a sui generis collectivity of overseas France in the southwest Pacific Ocean, south of Vanuatu, about east of Australia, and from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines, and a few remote islets. The Chesterfield Islands are in the Coral Sea. French people, especially locals, call Grande Terre "Le Caillou" ("the pebble").
