Formosan is a geographic grouping of Austronesian languages spoken by the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, comprising as many as nine of the ten primary branches recognized within the wider Austronesian family, with the remainder of Austronesian's roughly 1,200 other languages spoken outside Taiwan classified together as Malayo-Polynesian. Taiwan is considered by many linguists to be the Austronesian family's place of origin. Of the approximately 26 languages of Taiwan's Indigenous peoples, at least ten are already extinct and several more are moribund, with only about 35 percent of the Indigenous population still speaking an ancestral language; the languages are recognized as national languages of Taiwan and face continued pressure from Taiwanese Mandarin despite preservation efforts under way since 2005.
Facts
RegionTaiwan, spoken by the island's Indigenous peoples. 1 Proto-Language StatusFormosan is not itself a single clade and has no unified Proto-Formosan ancestor. It comprises up to nine separate primary subfamilies of Austronesian, each descending directly from Proto-Austronesian; the tenth primary branch, Malayo-Polynesian, covers nearly all Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan. 1 Connections
Ancestor Of
Atayalic is one of the primary Formosan branches, spoken in northern Taiwan.
East Formosan groups the Formosan languages of Taiwan's eastern coast.
Descends From
Formosan is a paraphyletic grouping of the indigenous Austronesian languages of Taiwan, representing the earliest-branching divisions of the family.
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Formosan Languages
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Formosan Languages
Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction, first paragraph
They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather up to nine separate primary subfamilies.
- Open Questions: How many speakers do the Formosan languages total today?
View the Source Open Questions (1 open question)
How many speakers do the Formosan languages total today?
The surveyed Wikipedia treatment states that Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are about 2.3 percent of the island's population and that only 35 percent of them speak their ancestral language, but gives no combined aggregate count of Formosan-language speakers, and the two percentages alone are not a citable total.
What would resolve this A published aggregate count of living Formosan-language speakers across Taiwan's officially recognized Indigenous peoples, from a source such as Taiwan's Council of Indigenous Peoples or a UNESCO endangered-languages survey.
Austronesian linguistics and language documentation (Taiwan).Wikipedia: Formosan Languages
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