Tolomako

Tolomako, also called Bigbay after the Big Bay area of northern Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, is a conservative Oceanic language and a close sister of the much-changed Sakao language spoken farther along the same coast. Its pronunciation and grammar stay close to what scholars reconstruct for Proto-North-Central Vanuatu: it has a simple consonant-vowel syllable structure and isolating syntax, its personal pronouns distinguish singular, dual, trial and plural, and its verbs mark realis and irrealis mood rather than tense. A closely related variety, Tsureviu, is usually treated as its dialect.

Big Bay entered recorded history in 1606, when the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Quiros landed there and briefly claimed the island as a great southern continent.