Yami belongs to Austronesian language family. Austronesian language family is the only language family mainly distributed on islands in the world, including 1200 languages. Its distribution ranges from Easter Island in the west of South America to Madagascar Island on the coast of East Africa in the west.

South to New Zealand (even if Australia is not included, the languages of Australian aborigines should be included in this language family), and Taiwan Province Province is the northernmost part of this language family. Its east-west distance is more than half of the circumference of the earth. It is said that the total population of this language family is about 250 million, and most of them live in Southeast Asia. As for the eastern part of New Guinea, there is only a population of over one million.

Austronesian language family is also called Malay-Polynesian language family. It starts from Madagascar Island in southeast Africa in the west, Easter Island in Chile in the east, Taiwan Province Province and Hawaiian Islands in the north and New Zealand Island in the south.

1706, the Dutch H. Lerant discovered the kinship of languages in the South Island. 1836 German W.F. Humboldt used the term Malay-Polynesian to speak this language family.

At the end of 19, German W Schmidt (1868 ~ 1954) named them Austronesian languages. Generally speaking, it is divided into four language families: Indonesian, Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesia.

This language family is mainly composed of the languages of the Pacific Islands, Indo-China Peninsula at the southeast end of the Asian continent and some islands in the Indian Ocean. The number of languages, some people think there are more than 300, others think there are as many as 500. Austronesian population is about 250 million.

Extended data

Austronesian languages are divided into four language families:

1. Indonesian is distributed in Taiwan Province Province (the indigenous language of Taiwan Province Province) and the Philippines (Tagalog, Pisayan, etc. ), Indochina Peninsula (Chinglish, Malay, etc. ), Nanyang Islands (Indonesia, Java, etc. ) and Madagascar (Madagascar).

2. Micronesian language is distributed in Mariana and Guam, east of the Philippines and north of the equator. Caroline, Botswana, Marshall, Nauru, Gilbert and other places.

3. Melanesian is distributed in New Guinea, Bismarck, Solomon, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji and other places east of Indonesia and south of the equator.

4. Polynesian language family is distributed in a vast area east of the above two major language families, including Midway Island and Hawaii, north of the equator and to the right of the international international date line.

There are more than 65,438+000 languages and dialects in Phoenix, Tokelau, Samoa, French Polynesia, Pitcairn Island, Easter Island, Tonga and New Zealand south of the equator.

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