Enrique Ayuso

108305051
Final Paper
Austronesian Languages

Languages are the way we communicate with people, but in a deeper sense it is
the way people associate themselves to a particular set of beliefs. It is the way a
culture is born and grows. This is no different when it come to Austronesian
languages. In fact, the Austronesian languages are so rich, diverse and have millions
of speakers who still speak it today. Austronesian languages is a term for a vast
amount of languages that vary from Southeast Asia to the western part of the islands
of the Pacific. Austronesia is not extremely large when it comes to geography, but it
has well over a thousand languages, almost two thousand. The scope of this paper will
be focusing on discussing some of the language’s history while individually looking at
some of them and trying to find a connection between them.

Austronesian speakers are believed to have initiated in present-day Indonesia and The
New Guinea. In the past some people would sail the seas and go all the way to the
Pacific, while taking possession of the numerous islands. According to some texts,
this taking possession of many islands was done in different time spans and different
ways, which helps to explain the relation of some of the languages. Interestingly, the
history of the Indonesian languages being in the Indonesian islands and New Guinea
start from 30,000 B.C. This is the earliest known record of people being there at the
time and in about 1500 B.C. there were two clusters of people from Indonesia and
New Guinea that began taking over Micronesia and Melanesia. Next, around 500
B.C. - 500 A.D. the great area of Polynesia was also taken over by these clusters of
people. Obviously, too many islands were being controlled which led to less contact
with the original clusters of people. As a result, today we have hundreds of languages
but they trace back to having a similar history. Austronesian languages are also
previously called Malayo-Polynesian languages. To relate it to today. The
Austronesian languages are spoken in The Philippines, Madagascar, and the island
clusters of the Central and South Pacific but not including Australia and a lot of New
Guinea. However, it is still spoken in a lot of parts in Malaysia, and dispersed areas
of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Taiwan. The Austronesian language is also one of
the world’s largest and has a long history that still reaches and impacts us today. The
languages is so impactful in fact that the Austronesian language family comprises of
about one-fifth of the world’s tongues or languages. Individually if you were to
compare it , only the the Niger-Congo family of African languages has that amount
of numbers. It must be noted that the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan language
relations have significantly more speakers. This is true but the number of
Austronesian speakers cannot also go unseen. It’s pretty amazing how languages
diversify over time when they originally started out the same. If you were to compare
it to another culture, for instance Latin America. You would not have a similar number
of diverse languages. Whereas in latin America today you have for the most part
Spanish. This would not apply to the Austronesian world with such a huge number of
languages.

When it comes to the languages of Austronesia there are many for instance there
are :Cebuano, Tagalog, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan,
and Pangasinan of the Philippines Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese,
Minangkabau, the Batak languages, Acehnese, Balinese, and Buginese of
western Indonesia, and many more. All these languages have millions of speakers for
instance the Javanese language. Around 25% of all Austronesian speakers talk
Javonese, and 25% is a lot for a group of languages of almost 2000. In eastern
Indonesia the amount of talkers per language dips to tens of thousands. In western
Melanesia to less than a thousand. In the central Pacific, the number of speakers rise
to a few 100,000s. Some of the most popular languages there are: Fijian, Samoan,
and Tongan. Interestingly, Tagalog makes the foundation of Pilipino, which as we
know is what is spoken in the Philippines. Next, the Merina dialect of Malagasy
which is vocalized in the plateaus around the capital of Antananarivo, makes the
foundation for Malagasy. A lot of Sanskrit languages mixed with the Javanese at the
time of the Christian era too. When it comes to the Filipino language traces of
Sanskrit can be found. The relation to Sanskrit words in fascinating considering the
Philippines people did not come in contact with the Indians but perhaps since they
intermingled a bit with the Malaysians it’s how this came to be. Also, when it comes
to historians they are still not certain but they believe that Madagascar had people
from Borneo during the 7th and 13th centuries CE. Interesting to note that Sanskrit Is
also present in Malagasy. We can infer that these people moved to Madagascar after
the Indian set of belief time and process. Moreover it is believed that there was a
presence and contact between Madagascar and Malay speaking communities at the
time. It also shows the continuous migration of Malay speaking people to Madagascar
at the time.
When it comes to the Austronesian languages, Malay which is talked in the Malay
Peninsula, some parts of the southern and central Sumatra, and some islands
probably has had the highest political standing. There is also 3 stone writings related
to Srivijaya in southern Sumatra and has the dates 683, 684, and 686 CE in a
language known as Old Malay. When Islam was around nearing the end of the 13th
century, Malay talking sultanates were recognized not only in the Malay region of the
Malay Peninsula but including Brunei in Borneo. In some parts like the northern
Sumatra, and Ternate and Tidore of the northern part of Moluccas, many of the
Islamic sultanates used the local languages, but many Malay borrow words in these
languages indicate that Malay crusaders also helped paramount in spreading the
language across these areas of the Austronesian world.

When it comes to the size of the Austronesian languages it is important to look at how
these languages are further divided as maybe some relevance can be found between
them. the smaller group of the languages is a key factor in telling us if there is a
linkage between them and how people would use it at the time. During the 1930s the
diversification of Austronesian languages was normally recognized with simply
terrestrial labels for instance, Melanesian, Polynesian, Indonesian and Micronesian.
The lack of this smaller group of languages is outward visible in Polynesian. This is
because Polynesian is known to include not only the dialects of Polynesia but also
Melanesia and Micronesia. Also, when it comes to the other terrestrial labeled groups
it turns out to be a mixed assembly of languages that are from other groups of
languages. There was also a research done and it concluded that the Polynesian
language and a lot of thee Melanesia and Micronesia have a similar amount of
ground-breaking features that are most reasonably credited to fluctuations in a
singular type of language, which was known as Urmelanesisch and which today we
call Proto-Oceanic. This shows a strong correlation between languages in the past to
the current one we have today. Moreover, The Oceanic theory says that most
Austronesian languages east of Indonesian and New Guinea come from a one
protolanguage vocalized many decades after the first proto- Austronesian language. I
personally think this is cool because if we can show the relations of these languages
maybe we can discover other things. For instance, some Austronesian languages also
share similar traditions and cultures. Maybe this theory can also be used to show how
the world was one harmonious place in the past but as time passed, we eventually
started to separate.

Also when it comes to the Polynesian language, it is known for its extensive terrestrial
spread and linkage connection with other languages. The Polynesian languages is
spoken in many areas such as Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. These areas
combined are quite large if you were to compare it to other countries like Mexico for
instance. Also these are the main areas Polynesian is used but there is also about 18
other Polynesian speaking cultures, which are generally located in Micronesia and
Melanesia. Polynesian languages commonly are normally classified into two groups
which are the Tongic also known as Tongan and Niue and the nuclear Polynesian.
When it comes to the Nuclear Polynesian it also has Samoic-Outlier and Eastern
Polynesian. Maori and Hawaiian which are two Eastern Polynesian tongues that are
definitely not near each other and have about 5,000 miles of sea seem to be about as
very much linked as the languages of Dutch and German are to each other. Other
foreign languages that not fall into this family of languages seem to be linked and
these are Fijian and Rotuman which is talked by a substantially Polynesian population
on the minor volcanic landmass of Rotuma which is located almost northwestern of
the Fijian island of Viti Levu. Several suggestions have been made concerning the
direct associations of the Central Pacific languages. These suggestions talk about the
possibility of linking the Central Pacific with some languages in central and northern
Vanuatu, but these suggestions remain debatable. However, there does seem to be
truth in the matter and maybe one day we do find out that they are in fact related.

Next, Taiwan used to be called the Island of Formosa. This was a term given to
Taiwan during the Portuguese arrival to Taiwan. When it comes to the Austronesian
languages thou The word Formosan is not to be seen as linkage of a subgroup defined
by solely shared originations. It is instead a shared word for a
extremely assorted group of languages, these Formosan languages also seem to have
some linkages with the languages of the Philippines and interestingly some other parts
of the world like present day Madagascar. Also, there is a language known as
The Yami language. The Yami language is used in Orchid Island which is an island at
the the south east part of Taiwan. The yami language is used by the Tao people and
used for communication in their daily lives. This yami language also has linkages
with Ivatan and Itbayaten in the north part of The Philippines. Taiwan also has other
languages which are spoken by the aboriginals or natives. These aboriginal languages
are also thought to be closely linked to other parts of the whole of the Malayo
Polynesian branch. Under such situations some small subcategories or even solitary
languages offer an autonomous linkage of indication for the construction of Proto
Austronesian that is supposedly equal to the whole of Malayo Polynesian division of
about 1,180 known constituent languages. When it comes to the Formosan languages
there are many but some of them include the following. The first is the language s like
the Atayal which is spoken by the Atayal people in Taiwan. The Amis language
which are talked by the Amis people who mostly reside in Hualien and Taitung, and
also Paiwan spoken by the Paiwan aboriginal group. The Paiwan people also live in
various parts of Taiwan like the eastern part of Taitung and Dawu mountain which is
in the north of Taiwan. Other Formosan languages are also present but information on
them is rather challenging to uncover.

Lastly, when it comes to the counting systems in the Austronesian languages a lot of
these languages have counting structures. In eastern Indonesia they even have quinary
systems which is a form of counting numbers. There are also vast differences for
instance in New Guinea many Austronesian languages have completely different
counting numbers. Here is the counting numbers that is found
online sago ‘one,’ ruwa ‘two,’ aroba ‘three,’ ruwa ma ruwa ‘four’
miikovi ‘five’, miikovi ma sago ‘six,’ miikovi ma ruwa ‘seven,’ etc.. These numbers
are quite unique compared to those ones in the Philippines but they are still thought to
be related just changed a bit through the diversification that happened over time. We
can conclude that the also numbers and a lot of the structures of the languages in the
Austronesian family are essentially related. However, as the world progressed, and
people moved or migrated from where they originally were so too did the languages
but essentially, they all share a family originated language.

References

1. AdelaarPayne Austronesian languages (in press).pdf (nccu.edu.tw)

2. Austronesian Language Family - Structure & Writing - MustGo
3. The dispersal of Austronesian languages in Island South East Asia: Current
findings and debates - Klamer - 2019 - Language and Linguistics Compass - Wiley
Online Library
4. AFLA 26 - Western University (uwo.ca)