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- Austronesian languages, family of languages spoken in most of the Indonesian archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan.
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Austronesian languages, family of languages spoken in most of the Indonesian archipelago; all of the Philippines, Madagascar, and the island groups of the Central and South Pacific (except for Australia and much of New Guinea); much of Malaysia; and scattered areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan.
The Austronesian languages (/ ˌ ɔː s t r ə ˈ n iː ʒ ən /) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken by about 386 million people (4.9% of the world population ...
People speaking Austronesian languages completed the human settlement of the earth recently as they settled on the islands of the vast Pacific and penetrated the Indian Ocean to Madagascar, off the coast of southeast Africa.
Austronesian languages - Classification, Prehistory, Diversity: Given the size of the Austronesian family, the subgrouping of the languages is a matter of some importance, bearing on, among other things, the determination of the Austronesian homeland.
Austronesian languages, formerly Malayo-Polynesian languages, Family of about 1,200 languages spoken by more than 200 million people in Indonesia, the Philippines, Madagascar, the central and southern Pacific island groups (except most of New Guinea; see Papuan languages ), and parts of mainland Southeast Asia and the island of Taiwan.
The Austronesian language family is the second largest on Earth in number of languages, and was the largest in geographical extent before the European colonial expansions of the past five centuries. This alone makes the determination of its homeland a research question of the first order.
Jul 1, 1991 · The Austronesian languages of the Pacific spread across 10,000 kilometers of coastline and sea within 1,500 years, the fastest and widest expansion of prehistoric times. Farmers led the way.
