Malayo-Polynesian
| Malayo-Polynesian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Southeast Asia and the Pacific |
| Linguistic classification: |
Austronesian
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| Proto-language: | Proto-Malayo-Polynesian |
| Subdivisions: |
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| ISO 639-5: | |
| Glottolog: | mala1545 |
The western sphere of Malayo-Polynesian languages.
the westernmost Oceanic languages
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 The branches of the Oceanic languages:
The black ovals at the northwestern limit of Micronesia are the Sunda–Sulawesi languages called Palauan and Chamorro. The black circles in with the green are offshore Papuan languages.
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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 people of the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam serve as the northwest geographic outlier, going well into the Malay peninsula. On the northern most geographical outlier does not pass beyond the north of Pattani, which is located in southern Thailand. Malagasy is spoken in the island of Madagascar located off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Part of the language family shows a strong influence of Sanskrit and particularly Arabic as the Western part of the region has been a stronghold of Buddhism, Hinduism, and, since the 10th century, Islam.
Two morphological characteristics of the Malayo-Polynesian languages are a system of affixation and the reduplication (repetition of all or part of a word, such as ) to form new words. Like other Austronesian languages they have small phonemic inventories; thus a text has few but frequent sounds. The majority also lack consonant clusters (e.g., [str] in English). Most also have only a small set of vowels, five being a common number.
The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by about 230 million people and include Malay (Indonesian and Malaysian), Sundanese, Javanese, Bugise, Balinese, Acehnese; and also the Oceanic languages, including Tolai, Gilbertese, Fijian, and Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Māori, Samoan, Tahitian, and Tongan.
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