Fiji Islands Culture & Language

Fijian culture is Melanesian with strong Polynesian influence, overlaid since the nineteenth century by a large South Asian community, and the two traditions sit side by side.

Kava and ceremony

The yaqona ceremony structures everything formal. Presenting kava root to a chief — sevusevu — is how a stranger is admitted to a village, and the sequence of clapping, receiving the cup and drinking it in one has rules that are worth learning before you sit down. The pounded root is mildly sedative and the effect is a numb tongue and a long conversation.

Music and dance

Meke combines chant, dance and story, performed with lali slit drums. Fijian choral singing, particularly in Methodist churches on a Sunday, is extraordinary and worth going out of your way for.

Firewalking

The people of Beqa island have a hereditary tradition of walking on heated stones, distinct from the Indo-Fijian firewalking practised at Hindu festivals — two unrelated traditions that happen to share a country.

Indo-Fijian culture

Hindu temples, Diwali as a national public holiday, and a strand of the national cooking — roti, curries, dhal — that is now simply Fijian food.

Rugby

Fiji has under a million people and is a genuine world power in rugby sevens, winning the country’s first Olympic medal of any colour with gold in 2016 — an event marked with a public holiday and a commemorative banknote. The game is played barefoot on any flat ground, and the national sevens side is followed with an intensity that has no real parallel in the country’s public life.

Craft and food

Masi bark cloth with stencilled patterns, lovo meals cooked in an earth oven, and kokoda, raw fish cured in lime juice and coconut cream.

There are three official languages: English, iTaukei Fijian and Fiji Hindi.

English is universal as the language of government, schooling and business, and is spoken well by nearly everyone. A visitor needs nothing else.

iTaukei Fijian is the first language of indigenous Fijians. Its spelling catches people out: b is pronounced mb, d is nd, q is ng as in finger, g is ng as in singer, and c is th. So Nadi is said Nandi, Beqa is Mbengga, and yaqona is yanggona.

Fiji Hindi is spoken by the Indo-Fijian community and differs from standard Hindi.

Useful: bula for hello, said constantly, vinaka for thank you, vinaka vakalevu for thank you very much, and moce for goodbye.