Austronesian

A. There are almost 1,000 Austronesian languages. They are mostly spoken in the islands of Southeast Asia and eastward of New Guinea and Australia. Most of these languages are relatively similar, even across spaces as vast as that between the Philippines, Malaysia, and the South Seas. Malagasy is an Austronesian language, indicating that people sailed all the way from Southern Asia to Madagascar. The language is still similar to its sisters.

Cognates in Austronesian languages:

B. The Austronesian languages that are most different from the others are spoken in Taiwan. In fact, Austronesian consists of four subfamilies, and three of them are spoken on this small island. These three subfamilies consist only of a dozen-odd living languages. But linguists take this kind of contrast in diversity as evidence that the family originated in Taiwan, because where the languages have existed the longest, they would have had the most time to diverge from one another.

C. On the other hand, the Austronesian languages that are most akin to one another are the Polynesian ones.

Cognates in Polynesian languages:

This suggests that they are the newest Austronesian languages, because they haven’t had time to diverge significantly yet. Archaeology supports this conception of Austronesian’s history. Evidence suggests that western Polynesia was settled between 1500 and 1200 B.C., while the islands furthest from the western ones, such as New Zealand and Hawaii, appear to have been settled between 600 and 1000 A.D. Meanwhile, hill people in Taiwan and Polynesians share some cultural traits, such as using bark beaters to make clothes.

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