Vanuatu has more than 130 languages, making it both a linguistically and a culturally diverse country. Hence, language preservation and maintenance is vital for sustaining its cultural diversity. As David Crystal says, “To say that a language is dead is like saying that a person is dead. It could be no other way- for languages have no existence without people. A language dies when nobody speaks it anymore.” (Crystal 2002) As trained English teachers who are in various stages of postgraduate studies in Linguistics, we do not see a contradiction between teaching English and French as useful international languages and also making greater use of vernaculars and traditional culture throughout the educational system. Two questions posed by the symposium organisers are ‘Why is it necessary to keep vernacular languages?’ and ‘How can we keep them alive and relevant for contemporary society?’ This presentation will answer both questions with reference to linguistic research and skills acquired from Linguistics courses at the University of the South Pacific. Practical ways include language documentation and actively using the languages (in terms of transmitting oral traditional knowledge) to preserve vernacular languages; these will be further examined in the presentation, specifically software used in language documentation such as SIL Fieldworks Language Explorer1, ELAN2 and Jamovi3 and creating Talking Books for teaching and learning in vernacular languages. At the moment most of this technical work in documentation is being done by outsiders and foreigners. The Ministry of Education should therefore encourage and support students to pursue careers in Linguistics and produce future Ni-Vanuatu linguists who will be able to do these technical tasks. Work in language documentation and revitalisation projects in Vanuatu will help transmit traditional knowledge orally from one generation to the next. In doing so, we will be preserving not only vernacular languages but also our oral traditions as part of the culture of Vanuatu. This will go in line with the Ministry of Education’s National Language Policy which encourages students in their early years at school to learn in their vernacular language. When parents transmit traditional knowledge to their children, they are also helping to preserve vernacular languages. In relation to our contemporary world, we need to harness platforms and tools such as Facebook, smartphones and video channels to keep using these languages in 21st century domains, and give the next generation a reason to find them useful.