Malayo-Polynesian
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Malayo-Polynesian is a major branch of the Austronesian language family, which includes hundreds of languages spoken across a vast region stretching from Madagascar off the coast of Africa to Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. It matters because understanding this language group helps linguists trace the ancient migrations and cultural connections of the millions of people who speak these related languages today.
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The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippine Archipelago) and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia in the areas near the Malay Peninsula, with Cambodia, Vietnam and the Chinese island Hainan as the northwest geographic outlier. Malagasy, spoken on the island of Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, is the furthest western outlier.
Many languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family in insular Southeast Asia show the strong influence of Sanskrit, Tamil and Arabic, as the western part of the region has been a stronghold of Hinduism, Buddhism, and, later, Islam.