Austronesian

Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people and one Austronesian language, Malay, is spoken by 250 million people, making it the 8th most spoken language in the world.

Blust, R. (1999), "Subgrouping, circularity and extinction: some issues in Austronesian comparative linguistics" in E. Zeitoun & P.J.K Li, ed., Selected papers from the Eighth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics.

Comparative Austronesian dictionary: an introduction to Austronesian studies.

He proposed that the current reconstructions for Proto-Austronesian actually correspond to an intermediate stage, which he terms "Proto-Nuclear Austronesian".

In history The red junglefowl An early domestication of chickens in Southeast Asia is probable, since the word for domestic chicken (*manuk) is part of the reconstructed Proto-Austronesian language (see Austronesian languages ).

Most Austronesian languages lack a long history of written attestation, making the feat of reconstructing earlier stages – up to distant Proto-Austronesian – all the more remarkable.

The word for eye in many Austronesian languages is mata (from the most northerly Austronesian languages, Formosan languages such as Bunun and Amis all the way south to Māori ).

Twenty or so Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of major and official Austronesian languages ).

All Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan (including its offshore Yami language ) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch, sometimes called Extra-Formosan.

An Austronesian Village showing several traditional houses, Malagasy levu).

Anthropologists believe that all Polynesians have descended from a South Pacific proto-culture created by an Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) people that had migrated from Southeast Asia.

Austronesian peoples added to the native Melanesian population around 2000 BCE. citation Melanesian features are strongest in the islands of Kei and Aru and amongst the interior people of Seram and Buru islands.

Austronesians expansion map An Austronesian outrigger canoe ; Malagasy vahoaka "people" is from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *va-waka "people of the canoe".

Austronesian Studies Relating to Taiwan, pp. 683–726, Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica.

Canberra: and in several other Austronesian languages.

Classification The internal structure of the Austronesian languages is complex.

Different sources count languages differently, but Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world, each having roughly one-fifth of the total languages counted in the world.

Distribution of the Austronesian languages, per Blust (1999).

Dwelling Following Peter Bellwood's model of a southward migration of Austronesian-speaking farmers (AN), Peter Bellwood,1997, The prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian archipelago.

Early metal phases in Southeast Asia It was around 2500 BC that the Austronesian people started to populate the archipelago and introduced primitive ironworks technology that they had mastered to the region.