MalayoPolynesian

Malayo-Polynesian is a traditional sub-branch of the Austronesian language family. It includes most Austronesian languages outside the Formosan group and covers a vast geographic area from Madagascar and the Malay Peninsula through the Philippines and Indonesia, across Melanesia, and into Polynesia. Languages typically associated with Malayo-Polynesian include Indonesian, Malay, Javanese, Tagalog, Cebuano, Malagasy, Māori, Samoan, Tongan, and Hawaiian.

In traditional classifications, Malayo-Polynesian is viewed as a coherent genetic unit within Austronesian. However, the unity of the group is debated. Some linguists regard Malayo-Polynesian as a geographic umbrella for non-Formosan Austronesian languages rather than a single evolutionary clade, and proposals for internal subgroups (such as Western Malayo-Polynesian, Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, or Oceanic) have been contested or revised. The exact relationships among its languages remain a topic of ongoing research, with modern methods producing varying trees.

Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is the hypothesized reconstructed ancestor of this set of languages, used to explain shared vocabulary and certain sound correspondences. The Malayo-Polynesian grouping has been influential in studies of Austronesian prehistory, migration, and contact across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. While widely used in older linguistic literature, its status as a single clade is not universally accepted among contemporary linguists.