Indigenous to Wallis island, the language is also spoken in New Caledonia since the 1950s due to a migration of many Wallisians (especially in Nouméa, Dumbéa, La Foa, and Mont Dore).

[3] However, Livingston (2016) states that the actual number of speakers is much higher (around 20,000), albeit difficult to count precisely.

[7] The letter ʻ, representing the glottal stop (see ʻokina), is known in Wallisian as fakamoga (faka: causative prefix, moga: Adam's apple).

Similarly the macron (Wallisian: fakaloa, 'to lengthen'[citation needed]) is used to mark long vowels but isn't always written.

[9] German linguist Karl Rensch used Bataillon's work as the basis for his 1984 Wallisian-French dictionary, in which he chose not to use the macron.

For example, the word for “to remain” in honorific, commoner, and vulgar registers are respectively ‘afio, nofo, & tagutu.

Due to its proximity with Tongan language, Wallisian has sometimes been classified within the Tongic subgroup (Elbert, 1953),[20] but later linguists stated it belonged to the Nuclear Polynesian group: Pawley and Green (1966), Bruce Biggs (1978) and Jeffrey Marck (2000).

[22] Loanwords included European foods (laisi "rice", suka "sugar") and objects (pepa "paper"), but also some animals (hosi "horse").

[23] Influence from English grew stronger after the American army set a military base on the island in 1942.

Jesus Christ was rendered as Sesu Kilisito, words like komunio ("communion"), kofesio ("confession"), temonio ("devil", from demonio, fr démon), but also some non religious vocabulary : hola ("time, hour" (lat.

Missionaries also introduced the days of the week into the language, using the Latin ecclesiastical style of naming weekdays with feria (transliterated as felia), much like in Portuguese.

According to many linguists such as Dr Karl Rensch, French did not affect much the language in the beginning but is now profoundly transforming Wallisian[citation needed].

[citation needed] In 1984, Karl Rensch stated that more and more French loanwords were entering the Wallisian language.

These stereotypes arise from the fact that since Wallis island was chosen as the administrative center for the French and as the seat of the Catholic bishop.

The natives being close to the Catholics however caused the locals to begin learning Latin words which they began to incorporate into their own language, especially in religious settings.

In 1959 when the islands of Wallis and Futuna joined the French republic as an overseas territory the educational system changed dramatically.

[22] As the French missionaries arrived in 1837 spreading Latin language, the natives became wary of a loss of Wallisian culture.