Rotuam

Rotuman, self-called Fäeag Rotuạm, is an Austronesian language spoken on Rotuma, north of Fiji, whose people were shaped by settlers from Samoa, Tonga and the eastern Polynesian islands, leaving the language heavy with Samoan and Tongan loanwords. In the seventeenth century Tongan forces occupied Rotuma until the islanders overthrew them in a single night of uprising.

The language is known for its metathesis: the final vowel of a word swaps places with the consonant before it, producing umlaut, diphthongs and long and short forms of words. The first confirmed European sighting of the island was by Captain Edward Edwards of HMS Pandora in 1791, while he was searching for the Bounty mutineers.