The
Austronesian languages is a
language family that is widely dispersed throughout
Maritime Southeast Asia,
Madagascar and the islands of the
Pacific Ocean, with a few members on continental
Asia. Austronesian languages are spoken by about 386 million people, making it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers, behind only the
Indo-European languages, the
Sino-Tibetan languages, the
Niger-Congo languages, and the
Afroasiatic languages. It is on par with
Indo-European,
Niger–Congo, and
Afroasiatic as one of the best-established language families. Major Austronesian languages with the highest number of speakers are
Malay (
Indonesian and
Malaysian),
Javanese, and
Filipino (
Tagalog).