English
has been used in Fiji since the first European settlers
(deserters and marooned sailors) arrived in about 1805. In
1874 Fiji became a British colony and English became the
working language of the colonial administration. Since then,
English has steadily increased in use and importance, and
today prevails in most official spheres (education,
parliament, business and the media). It is a second language
for nearly all Fiji Islanders, and is an official language
together with Fijian and Hindi. In 2006 a dictionary of Fijian
English will be published. The population is 840,300 (456,200
Fijians, 320,700 Indo-Fijians, 63,400 others).
Reading
Biewer, Carolin, Marianne Hundt & Lena Zipp. (2010). 'How' a Fiji corpus? Challenges in the compilation of an ESL ICE component. ICAME Journal, 34:5-23.
Siegel, J. (1989)
English in Fiji. World Englishes 8,
47-58.
Tent, J. & F. Mugler (1996) Why a Fiji
corpus? In Greenbaum, S. (ed.) Comparing English
Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp.249-261.
Tent, J. &
F. Mugler (2004) The phonology of
Fiji English. In Kortmann, B., Schneider, E., Burridge, K.,
Mesthrie, R., & Upton, C. (eds) A Handbook of
Varieties of English. Vol. 1: Phonology. Amsterdam:
Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 193-222.
Tent, J. &
F. Mugler (2004) The morphology
and syntax of Fiji English. In Kortmann, B., Schneider, E.,
Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., & Upton, C. (eds) A
Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and
Syntax. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 229-247. |
