people of the The Austronesian Family

[zain]

This family includes some 1000 different languages, spoken by about 250 million speakers. Malay and Indonesian (essentially the same language) account for about 140 million. Other examples include Malagasy in Africa, Tagalog in the Philippines, the aboriginal languages of Formosa (Taiwan) -- now almost displaced by Chinese -- and the many languages of the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiian in the north Pacific to Maori in New Zealand.

www.ship.edu/~psych/languagefamilies.html

did any one knows , when ,and how did thier languge got to malagasy islan in Africa ?,it is to far from thier land
are they black drividian type ? .

[Graeme]

Are you referring to the Malagasy Rep and their language? If you are then the language of the Malagasy people is Malayo-Polynesian and it arrived on the island with immigrants from what is now Indonesia probably more than 1000 years ago. Those people were not Dravidians, but proto Malays similar to Malays or Indonesians or Filipinos. The Polynesians are a composite people of proto Malays, melanesians and micronesians and are believed to originally derive from Taiwan, that is the proto Malay group. That group as well as most SE Asians come from what is now South China, near Yunnan province. How did proto Malays get to Malagasy? They were great travellers by sea as can be seen by their descendents in the Asia Pacific but everywhere they travelled they took their Asian food plants and animals with them like pigs, chickens, types of edible tubers.

[zain]

Madagascar
Population:16,979,744 (July 2003 est.)
Ethnic groups:

Malayo-Indonesian (Merina and related Betsileo), Cotiers (mixed African, Malayo-Indonesian, and Arab ancestry - Betsimisaraka, Tsimihety, Antaisaka, Sakalava), French, Indian, Creole, Comoran

Graeme said:

Are you referring to the Malagasy Rep and their language? If you are then the language of the Malagasy people is Malayo-Polynesian and it arrived on the island with immigrants from what is now Indonesia probably more than 1000 years ago. Those people were not Dravidians, but proto Malays similar to Malays or Indonesians or Filipinos. The Polynesians are a composite people of proto Malays, melanesians and micronesians and are believed to originally derive from Taiwan, that is the proto Malay group. That group as well as most SE Asians come from what is now South China, near Yunnan province. How did proto Malays get to Malagasy? They were great travellers by sea as can be seen by their descendents in the Asia Pacific but everywhere they travelled they took their Asian food plants and animals with them like pigs, chickens, types of edible tubers.

thanks ,
if they cross the Indian ocean and reach Africa close to a thousand years ago ,that is not very ancient ,
accoding to the Book i have ,the polynesians sailed vast distances during their voyages of colonizion in the pacific about 2000 years ago .


i'm not sure ,i think the hawaiian people are polynesians also

[Graeme]

Hawaiians, Maoris, Tongan, Samoans, Easter Islanders, Raratongans, Tahitians and so on, they are all Polynesians and speak closely related languages. For example, Easter Island is called Rapa Nui in the islanders language and means new Rapa in all Polynesian languages.

When I said about 1000 years ago I was guessing, it is not accurate and the immigrants may have got there earlier. Unlike the Pacific there are not that many islands in the Indian ocean to island hop on the way to Malagasy, it would have been a brave and difficult voyage. The Maoris of NZ arrived there a little over 1000 years ago from the main island of Hawaiki (Hawaii).

Kia Ora Na.