The Austronesian languages are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan. There are also a number of speakers in continental Asia. They are spoken by about 386 million people. This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog (Filipino), Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.
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 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. Malagasy, spoken in the island of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, is the furthest western outlier.
Javanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 98 million people.
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, Palau and the Mariana Islands.
The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw 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.
The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages.
The Sasak language is spoken by the Sasak ethnic group, which make up the majority of the population of Lombok, an island in Indonesia. It is closely related to the Balinese and Sumbawa languages spoken on adjacent islands, and is part of the Austronesian language family. Sasak has no official status; the national language, Indonesian, is the official and literary language in areas where Sasak is spoken.
The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member is Malay, which is the national language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia, and is the basis for Indonesian, the national language of Indonesia. The Malayic branch also includes the local languages spoken by ethnic Malays, further several languages spoken by various other ethnic groups of Sumatra, Indonesia and Borneo. The most probable candidate for the urheimat of the Malayic languages is western Borneo.
More than 700 living languages are spoken in Indonesia. This figure indicates that Indonesia has about 10% of the world's languages, establishing its reputation as the second most linguistically diverse nation in the world after Papua New Guinea. Most languages belong to the Austronesian language family, while there are over 270 Papuan languages spoken in eastern Indonesia. The language most widely spoken as a native language is Javanese.
Lampung or Lampungic is an Austronesian language or dialect cluster with around 1.5 million native speakers, who primarily belong to the Lampung ethnic group of southern Sumatra, Indonesia. It is divided into two or three varieties: Lampung Api, Lampung Nyo, and Komering. The latter is sometimes included in Lampung Api, sometimes treated as an entirely separate language. Komering people see themselves as ethnically separate from, but related to, Lampung people.
Robert A. Blust was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Blust specialized in the Austronesian languages and made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics.
The Barito languages are around twenty Austronesian languages of Indonesia (Borneo), plus Malagasy, the national language of Madagascar. They are named after the Barito River located in South Kalimantan, Indonesia.
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, 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. The evidence presented for this proposal are solely lexical.
The Bali–Sasak–Sumbawa languages are a group of closely related languages spoken in the western Lesser Sunda Islands. The three languages are Balinese on Bali, Sasak on Lombok, and Sumbawa on western Sumbawa.
The South Sulawesi languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian language family. They are primarily spoken in the Indonesian provinces of South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi, with a small outlying pocket in West Kalimantan.
The Sumba–Flores languages, which correspond to the traditional "Bima–Sumba" subgroup minus Bima, are a proposed group of Austronesian languages spoken on and around the islands of Sumba and western–central Flores in the Lesser Sundas, Indonesia. The main languages are Manggarai, which has half a million speakers on the western third of Flores, and Kambera, with a quarter million speakers on the eastern half of Sumba Island.
On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, 114 native languages are spoken, all of which belong to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. With a total number of 17,200,000 inhabitants, Sulawesi displays a high linguistic diversity when compared with the most densely populated Indonesian island Java, which hosts 4–8 languages spoken by 145,100,000 inhabitants.
The Greater Central Philippine languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian language family, defined by the change of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *R to *g. They are spoken in the central and southern parts of the Philippines, and in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. This subgroup was first proposed by Robert Blust (1991) based on lexical and phonological evidence, and is accepted by most specialists in the field.
Rejang is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the Rejang people in southwestern parts of Sumatra (Bengkulu), Indonesia. There are five dialects, spread from mountainous region to the coastal region of Bengkulu, including the Musi (Musai) dialect, the Lebong dialect, the Kebanagung dialect, the Rawas (Awes) dialect, and the Pesisir dialect.
The Moklenic or Moken–Moklen languages consist of a pair of two closely related but distinct languages, namely Moken and Moklen. Larish (1999) establishes the two languages as forming two distinct subgroups of a larger Moken–Moklen branch. Larish (2005) suggests Moklenic as an alternative name for Moken–Moklen, the latter term which was originally used by Larish (1999).
