Ajie

Ajië, also called Houailou or Wailu, is a Kanak language of the Austronesian family spoken around Houaïlou, Kouaoua and Poya on the east-central coast of Grande Terre, the main island of New Caledonia. It is the principal language of the Wailic branch of the southern New Caledonian languages, part of the Southern Oceanic group.

Like the other Kanak tongues it descends from the speech of the Lapita voyagers who founded coastal settlements in New Caledonia around 1100 BC. Throughout the period described here, Ajië had no native script and was carried by oral tradition.

James Cook sighted Grande Terre in 1774 and named it New Caledonia; the Comte de Lapérouse reconnoitred the west coast in 1788, and from 1793 English whalers mapped the Loyalty Islands.