Identifying and Analyzing the Dominant Languages in Small Island Developing States

Abstract

Despite their small size, in both area and population, many different languages are spoken by residents of the small island developing states (SIDS). Most of these languages are used by very few people. With one exception, the remaining forty-nine SIDS have one or more official languages. Slightly over 62 percent of the eighty official languages are those of former colonial rulers. Of the total of 1,500 languages, the Weaver’s minimum positive deviation method identified only 106 as dominant languages. These languages are spoken by more than 96 percent of the population in the SIDS. The data further show that twenty-eight of the fifty SIDS are monolingual and the remaining twenty-two are either bilingual or multilingual. Surprisingly, in many monolingual SIDS, the official language is not the dominant language. The dominant languages of these nations were first categorized as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual and then were analyzed by their location, area, and population size. No statistically significant variation was found between them. Reasons for these conditions are explained, and future research direction is provided. Key Words: bilingual, dominant languages, monolingual, multilingual, small island developing countries.