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The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages.
- c. 270 million (2020)
- c. 855,000 (2006)
- c. 24 million (2016)
- c. 109.3 million (2020)
- Overview
- Size and geographic scope
- Major languages
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. In terms of the number of its languages and ...
With approximately 1,200 members, the Austronesian language family includes about one-fifth of the world’s languages. Only the Niger-Congo family of Africa approaches it in number of languages, although both the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language families have considerably more speakers.
Before the European colonial expansions of the past five centuries, Austronesian languages were more widely distributed than any others, extending from Madagascar just off the southeast coast of Africa to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) some 2,200 miles west of Chile in South America—across an astonishing 206 degrees of longitude. Most of the languages are spoken within 10 degrees of the Equator, although some extend well beyond this, reaching as far north as 25° N latitude in northern Taiwan and as far south as 47° S latitude on New Zealand’s South Island.
Despite the enormous geographic extension of the Austronesian languages, the relationship of many (though not all) of the languages can easily be determined by an inspection of such basic subsystems as personal pronouns or the numerals. The Click Here to see full-size tableTable presents names for the numbers 1 to 10 in the Paiwan language of southeastern Taiwan, Cebuano Bisayan (Visayan) of the central Philippines, Javanese of western Indonesia, Malagasy of Madagascar, Arosi of the southeastern Solomon Islands in Melanesia, and Hawaiian.
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Fourteen of the 21 or 22 Austronesian languages spoken by the pre-Chinese aboriginal population of Taiwan (also called Formosa) survive. Siraya and Favorlang, which are now extinct, are attested from fairly extensive religious texts compiled by missionaries during the Dutch occupation of southwestern Taiwan (1624–62). All the roughly 160 native languages of the Philippines are Austronesian, although it is likely that the now highly marginalized hunter-gatherer populations of Negritos originally spoke languages of other affiliations. Approximately 110 Austronesian languages are spoken in Malaysia, mostly in the Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak. In mainland Southeast Asia some 7 or 8 Austronesian languages belonging to the close-knit Chamic group are spoken in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in border regions of Laos, and on Hainan Island in southern China. Malagasy generally is regarded as a single language, although it may have as many as 20 dialects, some of which approach the dialect-language limit. The remaining 900 Austronesian languages are about equally divided among Indonesia (including the western half of the large island of New Guinea) and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The great majority of Austronesian languages in the Pacific are found in Melanesia, particularly in coastal areas of New Guinea and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, the Admiralty Islands). The Austronesian languages of Melanesia are often found closely interspersed with an older population of non-Austronesian languages, collectively known as Papuan. With few exceptions the Austronesian languages of Melanesia tend to be spoken in coastal areas and on small offshore islands.
Major Austronesian languages include Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, and Pangasinan of the Philippines; Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Minangkabau, the Batak languages, Acehnese, Balinese, and Buginese of western Indonesia; and Malagasy of Madagascar. Each of these languages has more than one million speakers. Javanese alone accounts for about one-quarter of all speakers of Austronesian languages, which is a remarkable disparity in view of the total number of languages in this family. In eastern Indonesia the average number of speakers per language drops to a few tens of thousands and in western Melanesia to fewer than a thousand. In the central Pacific, where the average number of speakers per language again increases to more than 100,000, the major languages include Fijian, Samoan, and Tongan.
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Tagalog forms the basis of Pilipino, the national language of the Philippines, and the Merina dialect of Malagasy, which is spoken in the highlands around the capital of Antananarivo, forms the basis for standard Malagasy. Hindu-Buddhist polities, based on Indian concepts of the state, arose in parts of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra during the first few centuries of the Christian era and somewhat later in Java. As a result of these contact influences, Sanskrit loanwords entered Malay and Javanese in large numbers. Many Philippine languages also contain substantial numbers of Sanskrit loans, even though no part of the Philippines was ever Indianized. It is generally agreed that these and the later Arabic and Persian loanwords that are found in Philippine languages were transmitted through the medium of Malay.
It is now widely agreed, following the pioneering thesis of the Norwegian linguist Otto Christian Dahl, that Madagascar was settled by immigrants from southeastern Borneo sometime between the 7th and 13th centuries ce. The presence of Sanskrit loans in Malagasy suggests that the movement to Madagascar took place after the beginnings of Indianization in western Indonesia, while the presence of some Arabic loans that show distinctive Malay adaptations suggests that contact between Madagascar and Malay-speaking portions of western Indonesia may have continued after the initial migration from Southeast Asia.
Of all Austronesian languages, Malay—which is native to the Malay Peninsula, adjacent portions of southern and central Sumatra, and some smaller neighbouring islands—probably has had the greatest political importance. Three stone inscriptions associated with the Indianized state of Srivijaya in southern Sumatra and bearing the dates 683, 684, and 686 ce are written in a language generally called Old Malay. After the introduction of Islam at the end of the 13th century, Malay-speaking sultanates were established not only in the Malay-speaking region of the Malay Peninsula but also in Brunei on the coast of northwestern Borneo. In other areas, such as Aceh of northern Sumatra, the Sulu Archipelago of the southern Philippines, and Ternate and Tidore of the northern Moluccas, Islamic sultanates made use of local languages, but the large number of Malay loanwords in these languages suggests that Malay-speaking missionaries must have played an important part in their establishment.
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages.
Aug 16, 2022 · A study of Indigenous languages in maritime South-East Asia shows that the Amis of eastern Taiwan are the closest relative of the Malayo-Polynesian people, including Māori. This supports the idea that the Austronesian expansion started from Taiwan with seafaring communities.
- Victoria Chen
Jan 22, 2009 · The Austronesian people originated in Taiwan some 5,000 years ago. After a few centuries of settlement, they started a massive pulse of migration, spreading southwards and eastwards. They moved...
The Austronesian languages ( / ˌɔːstrəˈniːʒən /) 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 ). [1] They are spoken by about 386 million people (4.9% of the world population ).
Few of the languages are large or well-known, but those for which fuller descriptions are available include Manggarai and Ngadha, spoken on the island of Flores; Roti, spoken on the island of the same name; Tetum, spoken on the island of Timor; and Buruese, spoken on the island of Buru in the central Moluccas.
