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Most Austronesian languages are spoken by island dwellers. Only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people.
This is a list of major and official Austronesian languages, a language family originating from Taiwan, that is widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia and Madagascar.
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.
Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named "Indonesian"), Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog, Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
As mentioned previously, some of the largest and best-known Austronesian languages—including Ilokano, Tagalog, Cebuano, Malay, Acehnese, Toba Batak, Minangkabau, Sundanese, Javanese, Balinese, Buginese, Makasarese, and Malagasy—are Western Malayo-Polynesian. Central Malayo-Polynesian (CMP)
The Austronesian languages are a language family. They were originally spoken in Southeast Asia and on islands in the Pacific Ocean .
Austroasiatic languages appear to be the extant autochthonous languages in mainland Southeast Asia, with the neighboring Kra–Dai, Hmong-Mien, Austronesian, and Sino-Tibetan languages having arrived via later migrations.
