Paku (Bakau) is an Austronesian language spoken in four villages in the

East Barito Regency East Barito Regency ( id, Kabupaten Barito Timur) is one of the thirteen regencies which comprise the Central Kalimantan Province on the island of Kalimantan (Borneo), Indonesia. The town of Tamiang Layang is the capital of East Barito Regency, w ...

Central Kalimantan Central Kalimantan ( id, Kalimantan Tengah) is a province of Indonesia. It is one of five provinces in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Its provincial capital is Palangka Raya and in 2010 its population was over 2.2 million, while the 20 ...

province,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

. It is closely related to the

Malagasy language Malagasy (; ) is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language, brought to Madagascar by the settlement of Austronesian peoples from the Sunda islands around the 5th c ...

spoken on

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...

. Most of the remaining speakers are also fluent in other languages. The use of the language is decreasing and speakers are increasingly shifting to Ma'anyan, a lingua franca of East Barito. In 2018, it was estimated there was about 50 speakers of the language in the villages of Tampa, Tarinsing, Bantei Napu, and Kalamus in the regency of East Barito.

References

Further reading