Paicî is the most widely spoken of the two dozen languages on the main island of New Caledonia.

It is spoken in a band across the center of the island, in the communes of Poindimié, Ponérihouen, Koné and Poya.

Paicî has a rather simple inventory of consonants, compared to other languages of New Caledonia, but it has an unusually large number of nasal vowels.

[2] The palatal stops could be considered affricates because they occur with a heavily fricated release.

[2] Like its neighbour Cèmuhî, Paicî is one of the few Austronesian languages which have developed contrastive tone,[3] involving three registers: high, mid, low.