Topic summary
Greater Central Philippine languages
The Greater Central Philippine languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian language family, defined by the change of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian*R to *g. They are spoken in the central and southern parts of the Philippines and in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. This subgroup was first proposed by Robert Blust (1991) based on lexical and phonological evidence, and is accepted by most specialists in the field.
Most of the major languages of the Philippines belong to the Greater Central Philippine subgroup: Tagalog, the Visayan languagesCebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray; Central Bikol, the Danao languagesMaranao and Magindanaon. On the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, Gorontalo is the third-largest language by number of speakers.