The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers, spoken by Austronesian peoples outside Taiwan across island Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with Malagasy on Madagascar as the furthest western outlier.
Facts
RegionIsland nations of Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippine Archipelago) and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number of speakers in continental Asia near the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hainan; Malagasy on Madagascar is the furthest western outlier. 1 Speaker Count Disputed
Proto-Language StatusConsists of many small local clusters; only the Oceanic subgroup is universally accepted as a valid group, with its ancestor Proto-Oceanic fully reconstructed, while every other proposed large subgroup within Malayo-Polynesian remains controversial. 1 Connections
Ancestor Of
Celebic is a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian spoken across most of Sulawesi.
Why this is disputed. Central Malayo-Polynesian is a proposed branch grouping the Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Lesser Sundas and southern Moluccas; the coherence of the node itself is debated even though its membership in Malayo-Polynesian is not.
Why this is disputed. Central Philippine is a major branch of the Philippine languages, here linked directly to Malayo-Polynesian; the intermediate Philippine-languages and Greater Central Philippine nodes are not yet represented as their own entities in this atlas, so this row skips a rank rather than inventing the intermediate.
Why this is disputed. Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian is the traditional grouping uniting Central Malayo-Polynesian with Eastern Malayo-Polynesian; like Central Malayo-Polynesian itself, the node's internal coherence is debated in current Austronesian scholarship even though its membership in Malayo-Polynesian is not.
Eastern Malayo-Polynesian groups the Oceanic and South Halmahera-West New Guinea branches within Malayo-Polynesian, itself the largest branch of Austronesian.
Why this is disputed. Western Malayo-Polynesian is a widely used geographic cover term for the non-Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Philippines, western Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia; most current classifications treat it as a geographic convenience rather than a genuine genetic node, so it is recorded here as descending from Malayo-Polynesian with that caveat.
Descends From
Malayo-Polynesian is the branch of Austronesian that spread beyond Taiwan across island Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the Pacific.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Malayo-Polynesian Languages
Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction, first sentence
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers.
Introduction, second sentence
in the island nations of Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippine Archipelago) and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia in the areas near the Malay Peninsula, with Cambodia, Vietnam and the Chinese island Hainan as the northwest geographic outlier
Classification, Internal classification section, first sentence
Malayo-Polynesian consists of a large number of small local language clusters, with the one exception being Oceanic, the only large group which is universally accepted; its parent language Proto-Oceanic has been reconstructed in all aspects of its structure
Introduction, first sentence, speaker-count clause
approximately 385.5 million speakers
View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.