Rotuman Language Week opened across New Zealand on Sunday with a stark warning from community leaders that Fäeag Rotuạm could disappear within a generation unless families pick up the responsibility once carried by schools on the home island.
Rachel Mario, chair of the Rotuman Community Centre, told RNZ the diaspora in Aotearoa now sits on the front line of keeping the language alive, and she did not soften the message. “If we don’t revive the language or don’t do enough about it, we’ll lose it forever,” she said.
About 8,000 people of Rotuman descent live in New Zealand, according to RNZ’s reporting, which makes the local community one of the largest pockets of Rotumans anywhere in the world. UNESCO has long classified the language as endangered, and the share of fluent speakers in the diaspora is widely estimated to be well under 10 percent of the population.
The pressure has intensified because the Fijian government replaced Rotuman language instruction in island schools with Fijian, leaving overseas families to carry a load that classrooms back home used to share. Rotuma itself is a small volcanic island roughly 650 kilometres north of the main Fijian group, with its own distinct Polynesian language, customs and identity that sit apart from the wider Fijian population.
Mario said the threat was not abstract. “If you don’t teach your kids and you don’t learn it, or you don’t speak it at home, it’s going to be lost forever.” She framed the language as inseparable from belonging. “It’s their identity, it’s their culture. It’ll also empower them once they know who they are.”
The 2026 theme for the week, set by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, reads “Ȧf’ȧk, putua, a’pumuạ’ȧk ma rak’ȧk ‘os fäega ma ‘os ag fak Rotuma, la se maoen ‘e ‘os tore”, translated as Treasure, nurture and teach our Rotuman language and culture so it may live on through generations. The theme deliberately points at intergenerational transmission rather than performance, the slow daily work of speaking at the breakfast table rather than only on stage.
Mario’s advocacy did not arrive overnight. She fought for two years to have Rotuman Language Week formally recognised in the New Zealand calendar, joining a series of Pacific Language Weeks that now runs from May through to November and covers more than ten Pacific languages. The series is supported by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples and a network of community groups, libraries and schools.
This year’s events run from Sunday 10 May to Saturday 16 May. The week opens with a church service, with a decolonisation symposium and a seniors day also scheduled, alongside community gatherings around the country. Porirua’s Pātaka Art and Museum is set to host a community event on Monday 11 May, one of several anchor activities being held in the lower North Island. Auckland’s Rotuman fellowship has historically marked the week with services and shared meals at Kingsland, while Te Papa in Wellington has hosted tautoga, the formal seated Rotuman dance, in previous years.
Linguists describe Fäeag Rotuạm as one of the more unusual Polynesian languages, with a metathesis system that flips vowels in ways that surprise speakers of related Pacific tongues, and a sound inventory that includes vowel marks rare elsewhere in the region. That distinctiveness is part of why community advocates argue it cannot simply be folded into broader Fijian or Pacific language teaching, and why a dedicated week matters.
The history behind the diaspora pressure stretches back well over a century. Rotuma was ceded to Queen Victoria in 1881 and administered as part of the British colony of Fiji, then carried into the modern Republic of Fiji at independence in 1970. Rotumans have moved in steady numbers to New Zealand since the 1960s for work, study and family reunification, building tight community networks anchored on churches, fellowship groups and family events. Those networks are now being asked to carry the weight of language survival, a job that even motivated families find demanding when children grow up surrounded by English at school and on screens.
The Ministry for Pacific Peoples has positioned Pacific Language Weeks as a tool for identity, wellbeing and academic outcomes, pointing to research showing that young people who maintain a strong sense of cultural identity tend to do better at school and report higher self-esteem. Educators contributing to the official curriculum resources for the week have encouraged classrooms across the country to learn a few greetings and phrases this week, even where there are no Rotuman students enrolled, on the basis that small acts of recognition help signal that the language has a place in Aotearoa.
For Mario, though, the deciding factor sits inside homes rather than schools. She has urged parents and grandparents to use Rotuman in everyday settings, even imperfectly, rather than waiting for formal lessons that may never reach every child. The language week, she suggested, is best treated as a launch pad rather than a destination, a chance to set new household habits that survive the closing weekend.
Resources for families include videos and printable phrase cards from the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, materials hosted on the New Zealand curriculum site, and event listings on the official NZ Rotuma Language Week Facebook page. Christchurch City Libraries and several Auckland branches are running storytime sessions and displays through the week, and community organisers have asked anyone interested in helping with classes or recordings to make contact through the Rotuman Community Centre.
The wider Pacific Language Weeks calendar continues with Samoan Language Week later in May and Cook Islands Māori Language Week in early August, but for the next seven days the spotlight sits on a small island, a small language and a community in Aotearoa being asked to do something quite large.
Are you part of New Zealand’s Rotuman community, or learning the language at home or in the classroom this week? We would love to hear how you are marking Gasav Ne Fäeag Rotuạm Ta. Share your stories, events and tips in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply