The nine South Vanuatu languages form a family of the Southern Oceanic languages, spoken in Tafea Province (Tanna, Aneityum, Futuna, Erromango, and Aniwa) of Vanuatu.

Languages

François (2015)

François (2015:18–21) lists the following names and locations for the 9 South Vanuatu languages.

Proto-South Vanuatu

Proto-South Vanuatu was reconstructed by John Lynch in 2001. The language, compared to Proto-Oceanic, went through a series of vowel reductions, leading to the creation of a new vowel written as *ə, such as in *na-waiR "fresh water" resulting in Proto-South Vanuatu *nə-wai of the same meaning. However, it also preserves some, but not all final consonants. For example, *tanum "to plant, bury" is reflected in Proto-South Vanuatu as *(a)-tenum "to bury", but *taŋis "to cry" is instead reflected as *(a)-taŋi.

Vowels

The vowels of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are:

Consonants

The consonants of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are: ! colspan="2" | ! rowspan="2" |Stop ! voiced ! voiceless ! colspan="2" |Nasal ! colspan="2" |Fricative ! colspan="2" |Approximant