Austronesian Language Groups across Taiwan

The distribution of Formosan languages in Taiwan before Chinese colonisation as described by Austronesian linguist Robert Blust

Revisited

No.130 Issue 2/2018

Title

Island of Tongues

Researchers say onefifth of the world’s languages – including numerous Asian dialects – developed from the lingua franca of Taiwanese aborigines

Text

Rachel Genevieve Chia Few will associate primarily Mandarinspeaking, Japanese-influenced Taiwan with the roots of vernaculars spoken by over 300 million people today. But based on archaeological excavations and modern linguistic analysis, researchers are increasingly attributing the small island nation as the proud birthplace of the over 1,200 languages forming the Austronesian language family, including Malay, Indonesian and Tagalog. “Drawing on evidence from linguistic studies, leading scholars from around the world are convinced that the Austronesianspeaking peoples dispersed from Taiwan around 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, and that the island is the closest thing to an Austronesian homeland,” said prominent Austronesian linguist Paul Li in a 2011 interview with newspaper Taiwan Today.

DATA SOURCES: BBC, BRITANNICA, LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD, JUNE TSAI, LANGUAGE GULPER, FOX NEWS, ABOUT WORLD LANGUAGES, INDIGENOUS WELLNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE