The nine South Vanuatu languages form a family of the Southern Oceanic languages,^[1] spoken in Tafea Province (Tanna, Aneityum, Futuna, Erromango, and Aniwa) of Vanuatu.

• Erromango family
  • Southern: Sie, Sorung†
  • Northern: Ifo (Utaha)†, Ura
    (See Erromanga language#Linguistic situation for a description)
• Tanna family
  • Southern: Kwamera (South Tanna), Southwest Tanna
  • Northern: Lenakel (West Tanna), Whitesands (Weasisi, East Tanna), North Tanna
• Aneityum
  • Aneityum (Anejom̃)

François (2015:18–21) lists the following names and locations for the 9 South Vanuatu languages.

Proto-South Vanuatu was reconstructed by John Lynch in 2001.

The language, compared to Proto-Oceanic, went through a series of vowel reductions, leading to the creation of a new vowel written as *ə, such as in *na-waiR "fresh water" resulting in Proto-South Vanuatu *nə-wai of the same meaning.

However, it also preserves some, but not all final consonants. For example, *tanum "to plant, bury" is reflected in Proto-South Vanuatu as *(a)-tenum "to bury", but *taŋis "to cry" is instead reflected as *(a)-taŋi.

The vowels of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are:

The consonants of Proto-South Vanuatu, according to Lynch, are:

Consonants

		Labiovelar	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Stop	voiced	*bʷ	*b	*d		*g
	voiceless	*pʷ	*p	*t		*k	*q
Nasal		*mʷ	*m	*n		*ŋ
Fricative		*v		*s	*c, *ɟ [clarification needed]	*ɣ
Approximant		*w		*l, *r	*j

• François, Alexandre; Franjieh, Michael; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Schnell, Stefan (2015), "The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu" (PDF), in François, Alexandre; Lacrampe, Sébastien; Franjieh, Michael; Schnell, Stefan (eds.), The Languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity, Studies in the Languages of Island Melanesia, Canberra: Asia Pacific Linguistics Open Access, pp. 1–21, ISBN 9781922185235.
• Lynch, John. 2001. The linguistic history of southern Vanuatu. (Pacific Linguistics, 509.) Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.