Akei

Akei, also called Tasiriki, is an Oceanic language of the Austronesian family spoken along the southwestern coast of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu and centred on the village of Tasiriki, a name meaning small water. It is grouped with Wailapa in the Southwest Santo subgroup of the West Santo languages, part of the North-Central Vanuatu branch.

Scholars sometimes treat Akei as a dialect of a proposed Southwest Santo language shared with Araki and Tangoa, or describe it as a dialect chain whose varieties at the two ends are no longer mutually intelligible. It is known by local names including Navaka, Marino, Pilipili and Wailapa.

The Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós reached Espiritu Santo in 1606. Louis de Bougainville visited in 1768 and James Cook in 1774, when the archipelago received the European name New Hebrides.