The linguistic diversity of Fiji was prehistorically midway between that typical of Melanesia, where there is great linguistic fragmentation, and Polynesia, with its largely monolingual island groups. When the missionaries arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, they found that a kind of standard Fijian already existed, and attempted to learn it in order to translate the Scriptures and other religious and educational works. They were however not totally successful in learning standard Fijian, and their translations were in 'Old High Fijian' - a mixture of foreigner talk and translationese with vocabulary from both standard Fijian and the Fijian of Lau, the eastern islands where they had begun their work. This written form of Fijian became the accepted literary form - an example of an 'exonorm', or standard language based on the speech of people outside the linguistic community. The translation of the Deed of The linguistic diversity of Fiji was prehistorically midway between that typical of Melanesia, where there is great linguistic fragmentation, and Polynesia, with its largely monolingual island groups. When the missionaries arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, they found that a kind of standard Fijian Cession, by which Fiji was ceded to Great Britain in 1874, was written in Old High Fijian, but this does not appear to have greatly impeded the understanding of the terms of Cession by the chiefs who signed it. During the colonial period (1874-1970), particularly the last few decades, Fijian viewed as an obstacle to development, was used as little as possible in government, and was banned and denigrated in schools. The status of Fijian (along with the other major vernacular, Fiji Hindi) has improved a little since independence in 1970, and the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture worked to create a new written standard language based not on the Old High Fijian exonorm, but on spoken Fijian. Since 1997, both Fijian and Hindi have been designated official languages of Fiji, along with the colonial language English. Nevertheless, citizens who do not speak or read English are still greatly disadvantaged because literacy in Fijian and Hindi is not officially encouraged, and there are very few translators or interpreters, and none of them are professionally trained. [Source: Publisher information]