Language Atlas

How Languages Connect
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Language Family

Proto-Austronesian language

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

Proto-Austronesian is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families, believed to have diversified on the island of Taiwan, known as Formosa, around 4000 to 3500 BC. It is reconstructed as ancestral to a succession of major daughter proto-languages, including Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian, which in turn gave rise to the hundreds of modern Austronesian languages spoken today from Madagascar to Easter Island.

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.