Lenakel

The Lenakel are an Oceanic-speaking people of the west-central coast of Tanna in southern Vanuatu, around the town of Lenakel and Isangel. Melanesian seafarers settled Tanna around 400 BC, and the glow of the active volcano Mount Yasur drew James Cook to the island in 1774, when he found thousands of villagers tending yam and sugar-cane plantations.

Their language, known to its speakers as Netvaar, is a dialect chain of up to ten local forms and lies close to the Whitesands and North Tanna tongues. After Presbyterian missionaries adopted it as a church language in the nineteenth century, Lenakel became the most prestigious of the five languages of Tanna.