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 peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Au ...

outside of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

, in the island nations of

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

( Indonesian and

Philippine Archipelago The islands of the Philippines, also known as the Philippine Archipelago, comprises about 7,641 islands, of which only about 2,000 are inhabited.Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

, with a smaller number in continental

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

in the areas near the

Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula ( Malay: ''Semenanjung Tanah Melayu'') is a peninsula in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The ar ...

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

and the Chinese island

Hainan Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

serve as the northwest geographic outlier. Malagasy, spoken in the island of

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Afric ...

off the eastern coast of Africa in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

, is the furthest western outlier. The languages spoken south-westward from central

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, ...

until

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearl ...

are sometimes referred to as the

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

. Many languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family show the strong influence of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, as the western part of the region has been a stronghold of

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

, and, later,

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...

. Two morphological characteristics of the Malayo-Polynesian languages are a system of

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...

ation and

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

(repetition of all or part of a word, such as ''

wiki-wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

)'' 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 In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education ...

. Most also have only a small set of vowels, five being a common number.

Major languages

All major and official Austronesian languages belong to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. Malayo-Polynesian languages with more than five million speakers are: Indonesian, Malay, Javanese, Sundanese,

Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Taga ...

, Malagasy, Cebuano, Madurese, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, and

Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to: * Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people * Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center * Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...

. Among the remaining more than 1,000 languages, several have national/official language status, e.g. Tongan, Samoan,

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...

, Gilbertese, Fijian, Hawaiian, Palauan, and

Chamorro Chamorro may refer to: * Chamorro people, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific * Chamorro language, an Austronesian language indigenous to The Marianas * Chamorro Time Zone, the time zone of Guam and the Northern Mari ...

Typological characteristics

Terminology

The term "Malayo-Polynesian" was originally coined in 1841 by

Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of Mai ...

as the name for the Austronesian language family as a whole, and until the mid-20th century (after the introduction of the term "Austronesian" by Wilhelm Schmidt in 1906), "Malayo-Polynesian" and "Austronesian" were used as synonyms. The current use of "Malayo-Polynesian" denoting the subgroup comprising all Austronesian languages outside of Taiwan was introduced in the 1970s, and has eventually become standard terminology in Austronesian studies.

Classification

Relation to Austronesian languages on Taiwan

In spite of a few features shared with the Eastern Formosan languages (such as the merger of

proto-Austronesian Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify ...

*t, *C to /t/), there is no conclusive evidence that would link the Malayo-Polynesian languages to any one of the primary branches of Austronesian on Taiwan.

Internal classification

Malayo-Polynesian consists of a large number of small local language clusters, with the one exception being Oceanic, the only large group which is universally accepted; its parent language Proto-Oceanic has been reconstructed in all aspects of its structure (phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax). All other large groups within Malayo-Polynesian are controversial. The most influential proposal for the internal subgrouping of the Malayo-Polynesian languages was made by

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blu ...

who presented several papers advocating a division into two major branches, viz. Western Malayo-Polynesian and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian is widely accepted as a subgroup, although some objections have been raised against its validity as a genetic subgroup. On the other hand,

Western Malayo-Polynesian The Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages, also known as the Hesperonesian languages, are a paraphyletic grouping of Austronesian languages that includes those Malayo-Polynesian languages that do not belong to the Central–Eastern Malayo-Pol ...

is now generally held (including by Blust himself) to be an umbrella term without genetic relevance. Taking into account the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian hypothesis, the Malayo-Polynesian languages can be divided into the following subgroups (proposals for larger subgroups are given below): *

Philippine The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

(disputed) **

Batanic languages The Batanic languages (sometimes also called Bashiic or Ivatanic) are a dialect cluster of the Austronesian language family. They are spoken on Babuyan Island, just north of Luzon; three of the Batanes Islands, between the Philippines and Taiwa ...

Northern Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...

Central Luzon Central Luzon ( pam, (Reyun ning) Kalibudtarang Luzon, pag, (Rehiyon na) Pegley na Luzon, tgl, (Rehiyon ng) Gitnang Luzon, ilo, (Rehion/Deppaar ti) Tengnga ti Luzon), designated as Region III, is an administrative region in the Philippines, ...

** Northern Mindoro ** Greater Central Philippine ** Kalamian ** South Mindanao (also called Bilic languages) ** Sangiric **

Minahasan The Minahasans (alternative spelling: Minahassa) are an ethnic group native to the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, formerly known as North Celebes. The Minahasa people sometimes refer to themselves as Manado people. Although the Minahasan p ...

** Umiray Dumaget ** Manide–Alabat **

Ati Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...

* Sama–Bajaw * North Bornean ** Northeast Sabahan ** Southwest Sabahan ** North Sarawak * Kayan–Murik *

Land Dayak The Land Dayak languages are a group of dozen or so languages spoken by the Bidayuh Land Dayaks of Borneo. Languages ''Glottolog'' ''Glottolog'' classifies the Land Dayak languages as follows. *Benyadu-Bekati: Bekati (Bekatiq), Sara, Lara (Rar ...

* Barito (including Malagasy) * Moken–Moklen * Malayo-Chamic * Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands (probably including the

Enggano language The Enggano language, or Engganese, is an Austronesian language spoken on Enggano Island off the southwestern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Enggano is notable among the Austronesian languages of western Insular Southeast Asia because of many un ...

) * Rejang * Lampung-Komering * Sundanese * Javanese * Madurese * Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa * Celebic *

South Sulawesi South Sulawesi ( id, Sulawesi Selatan) is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sul ...

* Palauan *

* Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian **

Central Malayo-Polynesian The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages (CMP) are a proposed branch in the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding ...

(dubious) *** Sumba–Flores *** Flores–Lembata ***

Selaru Selaru is an island in Indonesia in the Tanimbar Islands group, Southeast Maluku. It is located south of Yamdena. It is one of the 92 officially listed outlying islands of Indonesia. File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Een groep jonge mannen te Adaoet ...

*** Kei–Tanimbar *** Aru *** Central Maluku *** Timoric (also called Timor–Babar languages) *** Kowiai *** Teor-Kur **Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (dubious) *** South Halmahera–West New Guinea *** Oceanic (approximately 450 languages)

Nasal

The position of the recently rediscovered

Nasal language Nasal () is an Austronesian language of southwestern Sumatra. Anderbeck & Aprilani (2013) consider Nasal to be an isolate within the Malayo-Polynesian branch. Smith (2017), though, includes the language in the "Sumatran" subgroup, alongside oth ...

(spoken on Sumatra) is unclear; it shares features of lexicon and phonology with both

Lampung Lampung ( Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and ...

and Rejang.

Enggano

Edwards (2015)Edwards, Owen (2015). "The Position of Enggano within Austronesian." ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 54 (1): 54-109. argues that

Enggano Enggano Island is about 100 km (60 mi) southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the 92 officially listed outlying islands of Indonesia, though it can also be considered a barrier island of Sumatra. Enggano is about long from ea ...

is a primary branch of Malayo-Polynesian. However, this is disputed by Smith (2017), who considers Enggano to have undergone significant internal changes, but to have once been much more like other Sumatran languages in Sumatra.

Philippine languages

The status of the Philippine languages as subgroup of Malayo-Polynesian is disputed. While many scholars (such as

) support a genealogical subgroup that includes the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Reid (2018) rejects the hypothesis of a single Philippine subgroup, but instead argues that the Philippine branches represent first-order subgroups directly descended from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.Reid, Lawrence A. 2018.
Modeling the linguistic situation in the Philippines
" In ''Let's Talk about Trees'', ed. by Ritsuko Kikusawa and Lawrence A. Reid. Osaka: Senri Ethnological Studies, Minpaku.

(Zobel 2002)

Zobel (2002) proposes a ''Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian'' subgroup, based on putative shared innovations in the

Austronesian alignment Symmetrical voice, also known as Austronesian alignment, the Philippine-type voice system or the Austronesian focus system, is a typologically unusual kind of morphosyntactic alignment in which "one argument can be marked as having a special relat ...

and

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

found throughout Indonesia apart from much of Borneo and the north of Sulawesi. This subgroup comprises the languages of the

Greater Sunda Islands The Greater Sunda Islands ( Indonesian and Malay: ''Kepulauan Sunda Besar'') are four tropical islands situated within Indonesian Archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean. The islands, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi and Sumatra, are internationally recognised ...

( Malayo-Chamic, Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands,

, Sundanese, Javanese, Madurese, Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa) and most of Sulawesi ( Celebic,

), Palauan,

and the

Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages (Blust 1993). Distribution The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken in the Lesser Sun ...

. This hypothesis is one of the few attempts to link certain

Western Malayo-Polynesian languages The Western Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages, also known as the Hesperonesian languages, are a paraphyletic grouping of Austronesian languages that includes those Malayo-Polynesian languages that do not belong to the Central–Eastern Malayo-P ...

with the Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages in a higher intermediate subgroup, but has received little further scholarly attention.

Malayo-Sumbawan (Adelaar 2005)

The Malayo-Sumbawan languages are a proposal by K. Alexander Adelaar (2005) which unites the Malayo-Chamic languages, the Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa languages, Madurese and Sundanese into a single subgroup based on phonological and lexical evidence. *Malayo-Sumbawan **Malayo-Chamic-BSS *** Malayic ***

Chamic The Chamic languages, also known as Aceh–Chamic and Achinese–Chamic, are a group of ten languages spoken in Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia) and in parts of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hainan, China. The Chamic languages are a subgroup of Malay ...

*** Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa ** Sundanese ** Madurese

Greater North Borneo (Blust 2010; Smith 2017, 2017a)

The Greater North Borneo hypothesis, which unites all languages spoken on Borneo except for the

Barito languages The Barito languages are around twenty Austronesian languages of Indonesia (Borneo), Southern Philippines, plus Malagasy, the national language of Madagascar. They are named after the Barito River located in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. The ...

together with the Malayo-Chamic languages, Rejang and Sundanese into a single subgroup, was first proposed by Blust (2010) and further elaborated by Smith (2017, 2017a). * Greater North Borneo **

North Borneo (I persevere and I achieve) , national_anthem = , capital = Kudat (1881–1884);Sandakan (1884–1945);Jesselton (1946) , common_languages = English, Kadazan-Dusun, Bajau, Murut, Sabah Malay, Chinese etc. , ...

*** Northeast Sabah *** Southwest Sabah *** North Sarawak ** Kayan–Murik **

** Malayo-Chamic **

Moken The Moken (also ''Mawken or'' ''Morgan''; ; th, ชาวเล, lit=sea people, translit=chao le) are an Austronesian people of the Mergui Archipelago, a group of approximately 800 islands claimed by both Myanmar and Thailand. Most of the 2,0 ...

(not included by Smith (2017)) ** Rejang ** Sundanese Because of the inclusion of Malayo-Chamic and Sundanese, the Greater North Borneo hypothesis is incompatible with Adelaar's Malayo-Sumbawan proposal. Consequently, Blust explicitly rejects Malayo-Sumbawan as a subgroup. The Greater North Borneo subgroup is based solely on lexical evidence.

Smith (2017)

Based on a proposal initially brought forward by Blust (2010) as an extension of the Greater North Borneo hypothesis, Smith (2017) unites several Malayo-Polynesian subgroups in a "Western Indonesian" group, thus greatly reducing the number of primary branches of Malayo-Polynesian: *Western Indonesian ** Greater North Borneo ***North Borneo **** Northeast Sabah **** Southwest Sabah **** North Sarawak *** Central Sarawak *** Kayanic ***

*** Malayic ***

*** Sundanese *** Rejang **Greater Barito ( linkage) *** Sama–Bajaw *** Greater Barito (

paraphyletic In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In ...

linkageSmith, Alexander D. 2018
The Barito Linkage Hypothesis, with a Note on the Position of Basap
JSEALS Volume 11.1 (2018).) **

** Javanese ** Madurese ** Bali-Sasak-Sumbawa *Sumatran
(an extended version of Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands that also comprises

Nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

; the question of internal subgrouping is left open by Smith) * Celebic *