This year New Caledonia was hosting the fourth edition of a festival devoted to the art of Melanesia, a kaleidoscopic travelling event which took place from September 12 to 24 in various parts of the country.

Around 800 guests came from 5 countries of Melanesia: Papua New-Guinea (over 800 languages), Vanuatu (over 100 languages), the Salomon Islands (around 80 languages), New Caledonia (28 Kanak languages), and Fidji (7 languages). Totalizing over 1000 languages (Austronesian) out of the 6000 spoken on the planet, these 5 groups of islands stand as a quite a paradise for linguists!

And this very appropriate setting saw the Académie des Langues Kanak organize a symposium on Melanesian languages on September 21 and 22.

Sorosoro Director Rozenn Milin was one of the lecturers. She was given the chance to shed a wider light on linguistic diversity, the necessity to preserve languages, and how to conduct proper linguistic documentation on audiovisual aids, as does Sorosoro.

Her intervention was widely mentioned in the media:

– RFO TV news broadcast

– Radio Australia, Radio Rythme Bleu

– Local newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes

This all takes place very soon before our next filming sessions taking place… in New Caledonia, from October to November 15, with the objective of an audiovisual documentation of Kanak languages.

Linguist Claire Moyse, from the CNRS-based LACITO (« Oral Tradition Languages and Civilisations ») laboratory, will be leading the team, along with chief operator José Reynes: They’ll be filming 3 languages of Grande Terre (the main island), two of which are seriously endangered, with only a few hundreds of speakers.

This film shoot is made possible thanks to the support of the General Delegation for the French language and the languages of France (DGLFLF, Ministry of Culture).