What is Austronesian languages? A documentary report all about Austronesian languages for the blind and visually impaired or for homework/assignment. The Austronesian languages are a language family that originated from Taiwan, widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the Pacific, with a few members on continental Asia, that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger–Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the best-established ancient language families. Otto Dempwolff, a German scholar, was the first researcher to extensively explore Austronesian using the comparative method. Another German scholar, Wilhelm Schmidt, coined the German word austronesisch which comes from Latin auster "south wind" plus Greek nêsos "island". The name Austronesian was formed from the same roots. The family is aptly named, as the vast majority of Austronesian languages are spoken on islands: only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people and one Austronesian language, Malay, is spoken by 250 million people, making it the 8th most spoken language in the world. Twenty or so Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of Austronesian languages). Intro/Outro music: Discovery Hit/Chucky the Construction Worker - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under CC-BY-3.0 Text derived from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages Text to Speech powered by tts-api.com Images are Public Domain or CC-BY-3.0: Austronesian_languages.PNG from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_schemes_for_Southeast_Asian_languages Migraciones_austronesias.png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages Formosan_languages.png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages 300px-Oceanic_languages.svg.png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages 2000px-Austronesian_including_Malay_and_various_random_languages.svg.png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages 2000px-Malayo-Polynesian-en.svg.png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayo-Polynesian_languages 640px-Austronesian_languages.PNG from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austronesian_languages.PNG Human_Language_Families_(wikicolors).png from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples 400px-Human_Language_Families_(wikicolors).png from http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages 320px-Austronesian_languages.PNG from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austronesian_languages.PNG

• published: 26 Apr 2015
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