We proceed on our exploration of the Kanak Xârâcùù language and culture, in New Caledonia. In the following video, Marcel Até recounts life as it used to be, a life of hard work based on the harvest of coffee, citrus fruit, and taro, products that needed to be carried across the mountains on foot. Then came the pesticides, and what’s more, the fire ant, a strongly urticating kind of ant that made harvest by hand impossible. Consequence of such curses, livelihood grew scarce…

See all videos in Xârâcùù

Read description sheet on Xârâcùù

Linguist: Claire Moyse-Faurie (LACITO/CNRS)
Image & sound: José Reynes, assisted by Karl Jorédié
Translation: Annick Kasovimoin (Académie des Langues Kanak – ALK)
Editing: Caroline Laurent

Xârâcùù is one of the 28 Kanak languages, a group belonging to the Austronesian language family. The Austronesian language family stands among the largest language families in the world, with its 1,000 to 1,200 languages shared over a vast area including a large part of Oceania, the Pacific, and South-East Asia.

Xârâcùù is one of the languages spoken in the Xârâcùù area, alongside Xârâgurè, Haméa, and Tîrî. It is the most widely spoken of these four languages, with 5,729 speakers over 14 years old accounted for in the 2009 census. One third of them live essentially around Nouméa, while the other two thirds have remained in their traditional area, on the eastern coast of Grande Terre, and mainly in the Canala and Thio municipalities.

Xârâcùù is also the fourth most widely spoken Kanak language in New Caledonia, following Drehu, Nengone, and Paicî – it is also one of the best maintained: spoken in every municipality of the Xârâcùù language area, it reaches over 90% of the population in Canala.

Like every other Kanak languages, Xârâcùù is part of France’s 75 languages, and recognized in New Caledonia as a language of education and culture since the 1998 Nouméa Accord. It is part of the programs at the Canala and Thio junior high schools, although the language still hasn’t been approved as a relevant option for Baccalauréat, the French secondary school certificate

Visit the Académie des Langues Kanak website (in French).