Saa

Sa'a, also called South Malaita or Apae'aa, is an Oceanic language of the Austronesian family spoken on Small Malaita, off the southern tip of Malaita, and on nearby Ulawa in the Solomon Islands. Austronesian seafarers settled Malaita between five thousand and thirty-five hundred years ago, and the speech of the south-eastern coast and Ulawa developed in village-based isolation into Sa'a.

The first Europeans to sight Malaita were the Spanish expedition of Álvaro de Mendaña, whose brigantine Santiago recorded the island in April 1568; regular outside contact resumed only after the Solomons were rediscovered in the late eighteenth century. Sa'a had no script of its own and was maintained by oral tradition.