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The Austronesian languages form a language family spoken extensively across Maritime Southeast Asia, portions of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the Pacific Ocean islands, and by indigenous peoples in Taiwan.
Austronesian and Niger-Congo are the two largest language families in the world, each containing approximately one-fifth of the world’s languages.
The Austronesian languages are spoken by approximately 386 million people, constituting 4.9% of the world’s population and ranking as the fifth-largest language family by speaker count. Key languages within this family include Malay, with around 250–270 million speakers in Indonesia, particularly in its literary form known as Indonesian. Other significant Austronesian languages encompass Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog (Filipino), Malagasy, and Cebuano. With an estimated 1,257 languages, the Austronesian family holds the second-highest number of languages within any language family.
While numerous Austronesian languages have a limited number of speakers, major languages boast tens of millions of users. For instance, Indonesian, spoken by 199 million people, ranks as the eleventh most-spoken language globally. Approximately twenty Austronesian languages hold official status in their respective countries.
The Austronesian people originated from Taiwan and initiated migration to Maritime Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean approximately 4000 years ago. They replaced and assimilated earlier populations, sometimes being the first to settle on islands such as Madagascar, the Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island, and New Zealand. As the first seafaring race in human history, Austronesians played a pivotal role in exploration.
Not surprisingly, during the first half of the second millennium CE, Austronesian had the widest geographical span of any language family until the colonial period when Indo-European spread. It stretched from Madagascar in the southeast of Africa to Easter Island in the east of the Pacific. Hawaiian, Rapa Nui, Māori, and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) stand as geographic outliers within the Austronesian linguistic landscape.
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