Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Map showing the distribution of language families; the pink color shows where Austronesian languages are spoken. 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 (Indonesia and Philippines) and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia and Madagascar.
The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19–25 sounds (15–20 consonants and 4–5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20–37 sounds.
Languages of the Austronesian family are today spoken by about 386 million people (4.9% of the global population), making it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard, named Indonesian), Javanese, and Filipino ...
The Oceanic languages were first shown to be a language family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1896 and, besides Malayo-Polynesian, they are the only established large branch of Austronesian languages. Grammatically, they have been strongly influenced by the Papuan languages of northern New Guinea , but they retain a remarkably large amount of ...
The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family.
The Language families of Asia. Asia is home to hundreds of languages comprising several families and some unrelated isolates. The most spoken language families on the continent include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Japonic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Turkic, Sino-Tibetan, Kra–Dai and Koreanic.
Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar and parts of the Comoros. ... Clickable map showing the traditional language families, subfamilies and major languages ...
The Austric languages are a proposed language family that includes the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as Kra–Dai and Austroasiatic languages spoken in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. A genetic relationship between these language families is seen as ...