Austronesian languages facts for kids

Language families. Places where Austronesian languages are spoken are colored pink.

The Austronesian languages are a language family. They were originally spoken in Southeast Asia and on islands in the Pacific Ocean.

List of Austronesian languages

Images for kids

A 5 dollar banknote, Hawaii, circa 1839, using Hawaiian language
The distribution of the Austronesian languages, per Blust (1999). Western MP and Central MP are no longer accepted.
Families of Formosan languages before Minnanese colonization, per Li (2008). The three languages in green (Bunun, Puyuma, Paiwan) may form a Southern Formosan branch, but this is uncertain.
Nested branches of Austronesian languages according to Sagart. Languages colored red are outside the other branches but are not subgrouped. Kradai and Malayo-Polynesian would also be purple.
An example of hypothetical Pre-Austronesian migration waves to Taiwan from the mainland. (The Amis migration from the Philippines is controversial).
Path of Migration and Division of Some of the Major Ethnicities with their genetically distinctive markers, adapted from Edmondson and Gregerson (2007:732) [1]. The sketched migration route M119-Baiyue from Southeast Asia corresponds to the southern origin hypothesis of early Austronesians.

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Austronesian languages Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.