The Austronesian language family is one of the most widely, geographically distributed language groups extending from Madagascar in the west, Easter Island in the east, Hawai`i in the north and New Zealand in the south.
The Austronesian language family comprises of four main branches: Atayalic, Paiwanic, Tsouic and Malayo-Polynesian, the first three of which are found on the island of Formosa (or Taiwan), and therefore placed beneath the top-level category "Formosan".
All other languages fall beneath Malayo-Polynesian, which has been subdivided into Eastern, Central and Western language groups.
Please only submit Web pages that are specific to the indigenous languages of Taiwan. Web pages specfic to the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese should be submitted to Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Natural_Languages/Sino-Tibetan/Taiwanese.
These are the indigenous languages of Taiwan. They are not related to the Chinese language. They are believed to be ancestral to all of the other Austronesian languages.
Please only submit Web pages that are specific to the indigenous languages of Taiwan. Web pages specfic to the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese should be submitted to Science/Social_Sciences/Language_and_Linguistics/Natural_Languages/Sino-Tibetan/Taiwanese.
Malayo-Polynesian is the subdivision in which the bulk of the Austronesian languages lie. It is broadly divided into three categories, Western, Central and Eastern.