Rotuman language

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Rotuman
Spoken in:	Fiji
Region:	Rotuma
Total speakers:	9,000
Language family:	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central-Eastern Eastern Oceanic Central-Eastern Remote Oceanic Central Pacific East West Fijian-Rotuman Rotuman
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`map`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`rtm`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key.

Rotuman, also referred to as Rotunan or Rutuman, is a language spoken by the indigenous people of the South Pacific island group of Rotuma, a Polynesian island that was incorporated as a dependency into the Colony of Fiji in 1881. Classification of Rotuman is difficult due to the large number of loan words from Samoan and Tongan, as a result of much cultural exchange over the history of the Pacific. Research by Andrew Pawley seems to indicate however that the language is related to the West Fijian languages.

The Rotuman language has sparked much interest with linguists due to the fact that the language utilises metathesis to invert the ultimate vowel with the immediately preceding consonant, resulting in a vowel system full of umlaut-ing, vowel shortening or exteding and dipthongisation.

Rotuman is typically considered an AVO (Agent Verb Object) Language.