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| Zobacz też: |
| Malayo-Polynesian | |
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| Geographic distribution: |
Southeast Asia and the Pacific |
| Genetic classification: |
Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian |
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| ISO 639-2: | — |
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 351 million speakers. These are widely dispersed throughout the island nations of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia. Malagasy is a geographic outlier, spoken in the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
A characteristic of the Malayo-Polynesian languages is a tendency to use reduplication (repetition of all or part of a word --e.g., wiki-wiki) to express the plural, and like other Austronesian languages they have simple phonologies; thus a text has few but frequent sounds. The majority also lack consonant clusters (e.g., [str] or [mpt] in English). Most also have only a small set of spoken vowels, five being a common number.
For several decades, Malayo-Polynesian was divided into Western ("Hesperonesian") and Central-Eastern branches. However, the Western branch was a geographic grouping never positively defined as a linguistic unit; it was only described negatively as those Malayo-Polynesian languages which were not in the well established Central-Eastern branch. In recent classifications it has been abandoned, with some of its languages split off in an "Outer" group as a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian, and the rest retained in an "Inner" group within a Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian branch. These Inner and Outer groups may also be called the Borneo-Philippines languages and Sunda-Sulawesi languages, after their geographic spread.
Borneo-Philippines languages have about 130 million speakers and include Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Bikolano, Kapampangan, Waray-Waray, and Malagasy.
These languages are spoken by about 230 million speakers and include Indonesian Malay, Malaysian Malay, Sundanese, Javanese, Acehnese, Chamorro, and Palau (Belau).
These include Gilbertese, Nauruan, Romang, Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan, and Tuvaluan.