Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. Malagasy, spoken on Madagascar, is a geographic outlier. Austronesian has a dozen primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively on Taiwan and nearby islands (the Formosan languages, which are unrelated to Chinese). All Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, with the exception of {{ll|Yami}}, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch, sometimes called Extra-Formosan.

Related Topics:
Language family - Southeast Asia - Pacific - Malagasy - Madagascar - Taiwan - Formosan languages - Malayo-Polynesian

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Austronesian is one of the largest language families in the world, both in terms of number of languages (1244 according to Ethnologue) and in terms of the geographical extent of the homelands of its languages (from Madagascar to Easter Island). It is also on par with Indoeuropean and Uralic as one of the best developed and most secure language family proposals.

Related Topics:
Ethnologue - Madagascar - Easter Island - Indoeuropean - Uralic

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The name Austronesian comes from the Latin austr?lis "southern" plus the Greek nêsos "island".

Related Topics:
Latin - Greek

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Comparative reconstruction, confirmed by archaeology and Chinese records, suggests that the homeland of the linguistic ancestors of these languages was in eastern to south-eastern China, from Shandong through to Fujian, from where they migrated to the island of Taiwan several millennia ago. On this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found, among the families of the native Formosan languages; none of the mainland languages have survived. (Modern mainland languages such as {{ll|Cham}} are more recent migrants.)

Related Topics:
Shandong - Fujian - Taiwan

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