Austronesian Languages

Austronesian Languages, formerly called Malayo-Polynesian languages, one of the world's largest language families, both in terms of numbers of languages—more than 700—and geographic spread—covering islands and some mainland areas from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island and Hawaii in the east. The languages of Australia and most of New Guinea, however, are not part of this family.

The Austronesian languages are divided into two branches: Formosan, the languages spoken by about 200,000 people in Taiwan; and Malayo-Polynesian, comprising the rest of the languages in the Austronesian family. The Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages consist of the languages of Micronesia, some languages of Melanesia, and the closely related languages of Polynesia, such as Tahitian, Hawaiian, and Maori, which is spoken in New Zealand. The Western Malayo-Polynesian languages include Malay; Javanese; Balinese, spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia; Malagasy, spoken in Madagascar; the Chamic languages, spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia; and Tagalog, on which Filipino, the national language of the Philippines, is based.

In general, the Austronesian languages use affixes (suffixes, infixes, prefixes) attached to base words to modify the meaning or to indicate the function of the word in the sentence. Base words often have two syllables. Reduplication is used to indicate plural number and other changes of meaning. Thus, in Malay, rumah means house, and rumah-rumah means houses. Verbal and nominal systems are often complex. Javanese and some other languages have forms of speech for specific social situations (such as informal or deferential). Austronesian languages are written either in the Roman alphabet or in alphabets based on Indian and Arabic scripts.

English words of Austronesian origin include taboo, tattoo, and ukelele (from Polynesian); amok, gingham, and kapok (from Malay); batik and junk (from Javanese); and boondocks (from Tagalog, or Filipino, bundok,”mountain”).