Vurës is the dominant indigenous language of Vanua Lava, spoken in a number of villages in the southwest of the island. Vanua Lava is called Vōnō Lav in Vurës, meaning ‘big island’, as it is the largest island of the Banks group. Today there are approximately 1,000-1,200 speakers of the language. More than 600 of these speakers live in the village of Vētuboso in the Vurës Bay area, with communities of about 200 and 100 speakers in the villages of Wasag and Kērēbētia respectively, and smaller communities in the surrounding area.

The tables below indicate the sound system and orthography of the language. Where the symbol used in the orthography differs from the phonetic symbol, the orthographic symbol is shown in brackets. The orthography used has been developed by Catriona Malau in consultation with the language community since 1999.

Consonants:	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Velar	Labio- velar
Voiceless stop		t		k	kp^w(q)
Prenasalised voiced stop	b	d
Nasal	m		n	ŋ (n̄)	ŋm^w(m̄)
Fricative	β (v)		s	ɣ (g)
Tap/trill			r
Approximant / Glide			l		w

Vowels:	Front unrounded	Front rounded	Back
Close	i (i)	y (u)	{u (u)}
Close-mid	ɪ (ē)	ø (ö)	o (ō)
Open-mid	ɛ (e)	œ (ë)	ɔ(o)
Open	a (a)