The Philippine languages, also called Philippinic, are a grouping proposed within the Austronesian family, chiefly by R. David Paul Zorc in 1986 and Robert Blust across several later works, that brings together essentially all the languages of the Philippines along with those of northern Sulawesi in Indonesia. The group comprises roughly 150 languages with more than 115 million native speakers in total, spoken across the Philippines, northern Sulawesi, the northern part of North Kalimantan in Indonesia, parts of Sabah in Malaysia, and Orchid Island off Taiwan. Despite the Philippines sitting near the center of the Austronesian expansion out of Taiwan, the article notes there is comparatively little linguistic diversity among its languages relative to that geographic centrality.
Facts
RegionSpoken across the Philippine archipelago and extending into northern Sulawesi and the northern part of North Kalimantan in Indonesia, parts of Sabah in Malaysia, and Orchid Island in Taiwan. 1 Speaker CountAn undated aggregate figure carried in the infobox; treated as approximate rather than a dated census total. Proto-Language StatusThe genetic unity of a Philippine subgroup within Austronesian has been challenged, notably by Lawrence Reid, and recent work treats the languages as a convergence area, a sprachbund, rather than a proven phylogenetic clade with its own reconstructed proto-language. 1 Browse and compare
Classification Confidence Reconstructed Ancestor Compare
Number of Languages In the Other Atlases
Found In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject is found.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Philippine Languages
WikipediaInfobox, geographic distribution field
Geographic distribution: Philippines, Indonesia (Northern Sulawesi, northern portion of North Kalimantan), Malaysia (Parts of Sabah), Taiwan (Orchid Island)
Infobox: speakers
115+ million
Classification section
The genetic unity of a Philippines group has been rejected particularly by Lawrence Reid.
Infobox: protoname
Proto-Philippine (disputed)
Lead paragraph
The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia-except Sama-Bajaw (languages of the "Sea Gypsies") and the Molbog language (disputed), and form a subfamily of
Lead paragraph, number of languages
Although the Philippines is near the center of Austronesian expansion from Taiwan, there is relatively little linguistic diversity among the approximately 150 Philippine languages, suggesting that earlier diversity has been erased by the spread of the ancestor of the modern Philippine languages.
View the Source Wikidata: Philippine
Wikidata Q947858, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)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.