In many areas, particularly the more urbanized ones, children do not acquire Marquesan as their first language. In urban areas, Most children under the age of fifteen have acquired French as their first language and have little or no competence in Marquesan. In smaller valleys children under the age of ten are often addressed in French and may have only a passive knowledge of Marquesan. In areas where Marquesan is still used as a home language schooling is only assured until age eight or nine. At that age children leave their home valley and attend secondary school in urbanized areas where French is the lingua franca.

Today the Marquesan community is bilingual with Marquesan and French being used in overlapping domains. Contemporary Marquesan is characterized by French-Marquesan code-switching and by French, Tahitian, and English loans.

Marquesan and French are used, partly in different and partly in the same domains of everyday life. Moreover, the speech of Marquesan adults is characterised by French-Marquesan code-switching and code-mixing (Riley 2001; Cablitz 2002).