linguistic:translation, information:classification, structural:expansion
Languages

Fiji has three official languages under the 1997 constitution (and not revoked by the 2013 Constitution): English, Fijian (iTaukei), and Hindi. (Fiji Hindi is a variety of Hindi common in Fiji.)

Fijian is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken in Fiji. It has 350,000 native speakers, and another 200,000 speak it as a second language. There are many dialects of the language across the Fiji Islands, which may be classified in two major branches— eastern and western. Missionaries in the 1840s chose an eastern dialect, the speech of Bau Island, to be their written standard of the Fijian language. Bau Island was home to Seru Epenisa Cakobau, the chief who eventually became the self-proclaimed King of Fiji.

Fiji Hindi, also known as Fijian Baat or Fijian Hindustani, is the language spoken by most Fijian citizens of Indian descent. It is derived mainly from the Awadhi and Bhojpuri varieties of Hindi. It has also borrowed a large number of words from Fijian and English. The relation between Fiji Hindi and Standard Hindi is similar to the relation between Afrikaans and Dutch. Indian indentured labourers were initially brought to Fiji mainly from districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, North-West Frontier and South India such as from Andhra and Tamil Nadu. They spoke numerous, mainly Hindi, dialects and languages depending on their district of origin.

English, a remnant of British colonial rule over the islands, was the sole official language until 1997 and is widely used in government, business and education as a lingua franca.