The Oceanic Languages

The Oceanic Languages is a 2002 reference work by John Lynch, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley, about the Oceanic family of languages – a large subgroup within the Austronesian phylum. It is the only formal survey of the field and a standard reference work for scholars of the Oceanic languages. The book's ubiquity among Oceanic linguists has led to its being referred to simply as "the blue book".

The book contains five introductory chapters which describe the history of the languages, their structure, the sociolinguistic considerations, and the relationship the languages have with each other, as well as a look at their last common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. These five chapters are then followed by a sample of sketches for forty-three languages. The book was written in part to expand on the previous works of Robert Henry Codrington and Sidney Herbert Ray whose work was then outdated and constrained mostly to Melanesian languages. Although it contains a substantial number of typos and some reviewers criticized some editorial choices, the book was well-received and remains in use as a standard reference for linguists.