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Malayo-Polynesian
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast Asia (Indonesian and Philippine Archipelago) and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia in the areas near the Malay Peninsula. Cambodia, Vietnam and the Chinese island Hainan serve as the northwest geographic outlier. Malagasy, spoken in the island of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, is the furthest western outlier. The languages spoken south-westward from central Micronesia until Easter Island are sometimes referred to as the Polynesian languages. Many languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family show the strong influence of Sanskrit and Arabic, as the western part of the region has been a stronghold of Hinduism, Buddhism, and, later, Islam. Two morphological characteristics of the Mal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austronesian Peoples
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia. Based on the current scientific consensus, they originated from a prehistoric seaborne migration, known as the Austronesian expansion, from pre- Han Taiwan, at around 1500 to 1000 BCE. Austronesians reached the northernmost Philippines, specifically the Batanes Islands, by around 2200 BCE. Austronesians used sails some time before 2000 BCE. In conjunction with their use of other maritime technologies (notably catamarans, outrigger boats, lashed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian Language
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan, as well as the Yami language on Taiwan's Orchid Island. The first systematic reconstruction of Proto-Austronesian ("''Uraustronesisch''") by Otto Dempwolff was based on evidence from languages outside of Taiwan, and was therefore actually the first reconstruction of what is now known as Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Phonology Consonants The following consonants can be reconstructed for Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (Blust 2009): The phonetic value of the reconstructed sounds *p, *b, *w, *m, *t, *d, *n, *s, *l, *r, *k, *g, *ŋ, *q, *h was as indicated by the spelling. The symbols *ñ, *y, *z, *D, *j, *R are orthographic conventions first introduced by Dyen (1947). The assumed phonetic values are given in the tab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Malayo-Polynesian Languages
The Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages, also known as the Hesperonesian languages, are a paraphyletic grouping of Austronesian languages that includes those Malayo-Polynesian languages that do not belong to the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) branch. This includes all Austronesian languages spoken in Madagascar, Mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia (the Greater Sunda Islands (including smaller neighboring islands), Bali, Lombok, the western half of Sumbawa), Palau and the Mariana Islands. Western Malayo-Polynesian was originally proposed by Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blus ... as a sister branch within Malayo-Polynesian coordinate to the CEMP branch. Because there are no features that define the WMP languages positively ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Malayo-Polynesian
The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian languages, Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian languages, Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding closely to the Indonesian provinces of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku (Indonesian province), Maluku and the nation of East Timor (excepting the Papuan languages of Timor and nearby islands), but with the Bima language extending to the eastern half of Sumbawa Island in the province of West Nusa Tenggara and the Sula languages of the Sula Islands Regency, Sula archipelago in the southwest corner of the province of North Maluku. The principal islands in this region are Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, Timor, Buru, and Seram. The numerically most important languages are Bima, Manggarai language, Manggarai of western Flores, Uab Meto of West Timor, and Tetum language, Tetum, the nat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Halmahera–West New Guinea Languages
The South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. There are 38 languages. The unity of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea subgroup is well supported by lexical and phonological evidence. Blust (1978) has proposed that they are most closely related to the Oceanic languages, but this classification is not universally accepted. Most of the languages are only known from short word lists, but Buli on Halmahera, and Biak and Waropen in Cenderawasih Bay, are fairly well attested. Classification Traditionally, the languages are classified into two geographic groups: *South Halmahera languages (along the southeastern coast of Halmahera, plus one language in the east of the Bomberai Peninsula). *West New Guinea languages (on the Raja Ampat Islands west of Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oceanic Languages
The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori, Western Fijian and Tolai (Gazelle Peninsula) languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic (abbr. "POc"). Classification 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippine Languages
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 a few languages of Palawan—and form a subfamily of Austronesian languages. Although the Philippines is near the center of Austronesian expansion from Formosa, there is 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. Classification History and criticism One of the first explicit classifications of a "Philippine" grouping based on genetic affiliation was in 1906 by Frank Blake, who placed them as a subdivision of the "Malay branch" within Malayo-Polynesian (MP), which at that time was considered as a family. Blake however encompasses every language within the geogr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palauan Language
Palauan () is a Malayo-Polynesian language native to the Republic of Palau, where it is one of the two official languages, alongside English. It is widely used in day-to-day life in the country. Palauan is not closely related to other Malayo-Polynesian languages and its exact classification within the branch is unclear. Classification It is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, and is one of only two indigenous languages in Micronesia that are not part of the Oceanic branch of that family, the other being Chamorro (see , , , and ). Roger Blench (2015) argues that based on evidence from fish names, Palauan had early contact with Oceanic languages either directly or indirectly via the Yapese language. These include fish names for the sea eel, yellowfin tuna (''Thunnus albacares''), left-eye flounder (''Bothus mancus''), triggerfish, sailfish, barracuda (''Sphyraena barracuda''), damsel fish (''Abudefduf'' sp.), squirrelfish (''Holocentrus'' spp.), unicorn fish ('' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greater North Borneo Languages
The Greater North Borneo languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The subgroup covers languages that are spoken throughout much of Borneo (excluding the southeastern area where the Greater Barito languages are spoken), as well as parts of Sumatra and Java, and Mainland Southeast Asia. The Greater North Borneo hypothesis was first proposed by Robert Blust (2010) and further elaborated by Alexander Smith (2017a, 2017b). The evidence presented for this proposal are solely lexical. The proposed subgroup covers some of the major languages in Southeast Asia, including Malay/Indonesian and related Malayic languages such as Minangkabau, Banjar and Iban; as well as Sundanese and Acehnese. In Borneo itself, the largest non-Malayic GNB language in terms of the number of speakers is Central Dusun, mainly spoken in Sabah. Since Greater North Borneo also includes the Malayic, Chamic, and Sundanese languages, it is incompatible with Alexander Adelaar's Malayo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamorro Language
Chamorro (; ch, Finuʼ Chamorro, links=no (CNMI), (Guam)) is an Austronesian language spoken by about 58,000 people (about 25,800 people on Guam and about 32,200 in the rest of the Mariana Islands and elsewhere). It is the native and spoken language of the Chamorro people, the indigenous people of the Marianas (Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Guam is a US territory while the CNMI has greater autonomy as a US commonwealth). There are three different dialects of Chamorro — Guamanian, Rotanese, and the general NMI (Saipan and Tinian) dialects. Classification Unlike most of its neighbors, Chamorro is not classified as a Micronesian or Polynesian language. Rather, like Palauan, it possibly constitutes an independent branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. At the time the Spanish rule over Guam ended, it was thought that Chamorro was a semi-creole language, with a substantial amount of the vocabulary of Spanish origin and beginning to hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yami Language
Yami language (), also known as Tao language (), is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Tao people of Orchid Island, 46 kilometers southeast of Taiwan. It is a member of the Ivatan dialect continuum. Yami is known as 'human speech' by its native speakers. Native speakers prefer the 'Tao' name. Classification Yami is the only native language of Taiwanese aborigines that is not a member of the Formosan grouping of Austronesian; it is one of the Batanic languages also found in the northern Philippines, and as such is part of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian. Phonology Yami has 20 consonants and 4 vowels: Vowels * /o/ can be heard as �after labial stop consonants. Iraralay Yami, spoken on the north coast, distinguishes between geminative consonants (e.g., 'thigh' vs. 'hen' form one such minimal pair). Consonants * /k ʁ/ can also be heard as sounds ɦwhen between vowel /a/ intervocalically. * Sounds /n l ʂ/ can be heard as sounds � ɮ ʃbefor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands, with a combined area of . The main island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanised population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Other major cities include Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries in the world. Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the isla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
