01
Origins
Every Austronesian language outside Taiwan belongs to Malayo-Polynesian. Its ancestor, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, is defined by a handful of sound mergers. Proto-Austronesian *C and *t fell together as *t, *N and *n as *n, and *S weakened to *h. So PAn *Cau 'person' is Tagalog tao, and *Sapuy 'fire' became *hapuy, later Malay api and Tagalog apoy. Robert Blust also pointed to a new set of pronouns as evidence that all these languages share one ancestor.
The mergers probably happened in eastern or southern Taiwan. Some time after 2500 BCE, speakers crossed the Bashi Channel to the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon, where red-slipped pottery of Taiwanese type appears around 2000 BCE.
02
The Great Dispersal
Over the next two thousand years Malayo-Polynesian speakers spread through the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi, Java and Sumatra, and onto the coasts of the Malay Peninsula and Vietnam. Around 1500 BCE a group sailed more than 2,000 kilometres of open sea to the Mariana Islands, the ancestors of the Chamorro. In eastern Indonesia and around New Guinea they met long-established Papuan-speaking populations, and the languages of both sides show the contact.
In the first millennium CE, Indian religion and statecraft reached the western islands. Sanskrit gave hundreds of words to Malay, Javanese and even Tagalog (Malay bahasa 'language', raja 'king', agama 'religion'; Tagalog guro 'teacher', from guru), and Brahmi-derived scripts came into use across the region.
03
Subgroups
This tree draws six branches of Malayo-Polynesian: Philippine, Chamic, Malayic, Barito, Central Malayo-Polynesian and Oceanic. Malayic, Chamic, Barito and Oceanic are well-supported subgroups; whether Philippine and Central Malayo-Polynesian are genuine subgroups or regional groupings is debated, and the groupings between the branches are less certain still. 'Western Malayo-Polynesian', long used for everything from the Philippines to Madagascar, is now generally seen as a geographical grouping without a common ancestor. Blust places Oceanic within 'Central-Eastern' and 'Eastern' Malayo-Polynesian, but these intermediate nodes are disputed, so here Oceanic grows directly from Malayo-Polynesian.
Where its languages are spoken
- Philippines
- Indonesia
- Malaysia
- Timor-Leste
- Singapore
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- Samoa
14 more countries
- Tonga
- American Samoa
- Tuvalu
- China
- Madagascar
- Thailand
- Vietnam
- Chile
- Cook Islands
- French Polynesia
- New Zealand
- Taiwan
- United States
- Wallis and Futuna
Turning points
- Sound law
The Malayo-Polynesian mergers
*C merges with *t, *N with *n, and *S becomes *h. Every language outside Taiwan shows these mergers, which is the main evidence that they all descend from one ancestor.
Compare with other mergers across families →
Sources (2)
- SplitContested
Out of Taiwan
Settlers cross from Taiwan to the Batanes Islands and northern Luzon. The 'Out of Taiwan' model is widely held, but alternatives that place the expansion's centre in Island Southeast Asia (Solheim's Nusantao network, Oppenheimer's 'Out of Sundaland') still have advocates.
Sources (2)
- SplitContested
Open-sea voyage to the Marianas
Settlers reach the Mariana Islands directly from the Philippines, one of the longest sea crossings known from this early a date. Chamorro descends from their language. The date of settlement is debated.
Sources (1)
- Contact
Sanskrit and Indic kingdoms
Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms such as Srivijaya and Mataram bring Sanskrit vocabulary into western Malayo-Polynesian languages: Malay bahasa, raja, agama, negara, and Tagalog guro. Much of it comes by way of Malay.
Sources (1)
- Writing
Brahmi-derived scripts
Scripts descended from South Indian Pallava writing are adapted for Old Malay, Old Javanese (Kawi) and other languages. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription (900 CE), the oldest known document from the Philippines, is written in Kawi script in a form of Old Malay.
Sources (1)
Contested classifications
- Largely rejected
Western Malayo-Polynesian
Evidence for
The languages share a broad profile: Philippine-type voice systems or their remnants, similar morphology, and a long common history of Indic and Islamic contact. For decades the grouping was used as if it were a branch.
Evidence against
No sound changes or other innovations shared by all of these languages and no others have been found. Blust himself, who introduced the term, describes it as a residual category for whatever is not Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. Well-defined groups such as Malayic and Barito probably branch separately from Malayo-Polynesian.
Sources (2)