Solomonic

The Solomonic group corresponds to the Southeast Solomonic family, a branch of the Oceanic languages spoken across the eastern Solomon Islands, from Santa Isabel through Guadalcanal and Malaita to Makira. Its twenty-odd languages share the merger of the Proto-Oceanic consonants l and R, and their close similarity points to a relatively recent dispersal.

Austronesian speakers of the Lapita culture reached the archipelago between about 1200 and 800 BCE, mixing with older island populations whose unrelated Central Solomon languages still survive on a few islands. The first European to reach the Solomons was the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña, who sighted the islands in 1568 and returned in 1595.