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The contemporary classification of the Polynesian languages began with certain observations by Andrew Pawley in 1966 based on shared innovations in phonology, vocabulary and grammar showing that the East Polynesian languages were more closely related to Samoan than they were to Tongan, calling Tongan and its nearby relative Niuean "Tongic" and ...
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Polynesian languages are all members of the family of Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the Austronesian language family. Polynesian languages show a considerable degree of similarity. The vowels are generally the same—/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, pronounced as in Italian, Spanish, and German—and the consonants are always followed by a vowel.
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 ...
The Polynesian Triangle is a region of the Pacific Ocean with three island groups at its corners: Hawaii (Hawaiʻi), Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and New Zealand (Aotearoa). This is often used as a simple way to define Polynesia .
They speak the Polynesian languages, a branch of the Oceanic subfamily within the Austronesian language family. The Indigenous Māori people form the largest Polynesian population, [9] followed by Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Cook Islands Māori. [citation needed]
The Oceanic languages were first shown to be a language family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1896 and, besides Malayo-Polynesian, they are the only established large branch of Austronesian languages. Grammatically, they have been strongly influenced by the Papuan languages of northern New Guinea , but they retain a remarkably large amount of ...
Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups: The large Austronesian language family , with such languages as Malay ( Indonesian ), Tagalog ( Filipino ), and Polynesian languages such as Māori and Hawaiian