Austronesian Languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia. It is on par with Bantu, Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Uralic as one of the best-established ancient language families. The name Austronesian comes from Latin auster "south wind" plus Greek nsos "island". 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. Some Austronesian languages are official languages . Otto Dempwolff, a German scholar, was the first researcher to extensively explore Austronesian using the comparative method.

Product details

• Authors: Frederic P. Miller
• Assisted by: John McBrewster (Editor), Frederic P. Miller (Editor), Agnes F. Vandome (Editor)
• Publisher: External catalogues UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.03.2010
• EAN: 9786130273705
• ISBN: 978-613-0-27370-5
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies