Languages of the Solomon Islands archipelago
Between 60 and 70 languages are spoken in the Solomon Islands archipelago[1] which covers a broader area than the nation state of Solomon Islands,[2] and includes the island of Bougainville, which is an autonomous province of Papua New Guinea (PNG).The lingua franca of the archipelago is Pijin, and the official language in both countries is English.The Central Solomon languages such as Bilua, Lavukaleve, Savosavo and Touo constitute an independent family within the Papuan languages.[3] Two other language families are represented on Bougainville, which forms part of the nation of Papua New Guinea but is geographically part of the archipelago.The status of the Reefs – Santa Cruz languages were once thought to be non-Austronesian, but further research found them to be divergent Austronesian languages.