Introduction

English is the national language of Fiji, used in government, business, and education. It is also the lingua franca among the many ethnic groups of the country: indigenous Fijians, Fiji Indians, Europeans, Chinese, Rotumans, other Pacific Islanders, and part-Europeans (as people of mixed race are called in Fiji).

A distinctive local variety of English is characterised by certain non-standard linguistic features. This ‘Fiji English’, like Singapore English (Platt 1975; 1978), is a linguistic continuum with variation according to the frequency of occurrence of these nonstandard features, here called ‘markers’. Speech at the lower end of the continuum contains the highest frequency of these markers, and speech at the upper end contains the lowest frequency. Speakers of Fiji English may differ both according to where on the continuum their speech is located and the range of the continuum over which they have competence.

The linguistic markers themselves differ according to their range in the continuum. Lexical markers seem to have the widest range, with some commonly used items from Fijian and Fiji Hindi (such as tanoa ‘bowl used for making kava’ and roti ‘Indian flat bread’) being found from one end of the continuum to the other. Certain phonological markers range from the lower through the middle of the continuum. These include the absence of certain consonant clusters and the presence of intonation patterns similar to those of Fijian – for example, questions beginning at a higher pitch than in standard English and ending with falling rather than rising intonation.