Localizely logo
Sign up

Language code: bi

Technical information about ISO 639 language code bi

Documentation

The table below provides technical details for the Bislama language, designated by the bi code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

bi

Name

Official

Bislama

Native

Bislama

Family
English Creole
Text direction

Left-to-Right

Language varieties
Port Vila BislamaSanto (Luganville) Bislama
Related languages
Tok PisinSolomon Islands PijinTorres Strait Creole
Key facts
Emerged during the late 1800s among labourers working on sugarcane and cotton plantations in Queensland and New CaledoniaAbout 95 % of its core vocabulary comes from English while its syntax mirrors Oceanic languagesWritten with a phonemic Latin orthography that avoids most English consonant clustersFunctions as a lingua franca that bridges speakers of over 100 indigenous languagesThe first full Bislama dictionary was compiled by linguist Terry Crowley in 1995
Sample phrase

Halo, yu oraet?

Character encodings

UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Bislama belongs to the English Creole language family. It is an official language of Vanuatu and is primarily written in the Latin script. It is estimated that there are around 200,000 speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

Vanuatu

200K

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Bislama speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Previous: Language Code List

Read next: Language Plural Rules

Tired of manually editing translation files?

Our platform streamlines software localization for you.

Try now for Free

Documentation

Localizely logo
About
Resources
Free tools
Boring stuff
Newsletter
Copyrights 2025 © Localizely