Appendix talk:Austronesian Swadesh lists

Spelling errors in Malay
Most of the words ending in '-a' in Malay have been wrongly changed to ending in '-e'. Why? This is not representative of the standard of Malay spelling.

Proposed Rename
As far as I can tell, all the languages listed here are Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Does anyone have a problem if this page gets renamed to 'Swadesh lists for Western Malayo-Polynesian languages'. This would allow the entire Central-Eastern half (including Fijian, Samoan, Maori, Tongan, Hawaiian, Gilbertese, and Marshallese) to be represented in a Central-Eastern equivalent of this page (eg. 'Swadesh lists for Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages'). --Jonsafari 22:36, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. The name should be changed, as all languages contained in it are from the Western branch, opening up the possibility for an Eastern representation. --Glokplopit 8 December 2005


 * Actually, Tahitian is a POlynesian language, and thus from the eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch. And in fact, there is no western branch of this family as such. The term 'western Malayo-Polynesian' simply refers to the languages located in the western geographic region occupied by the family which do not belong to the eastern subgroup. There are a number of western branches, and not just one 'Western branch'.


 * The astute reader will notice the date that I wrote this, and look at the article as of that date rather than the current revision. The list still isn't very balanced (as of today). --Jonsafari 17:29, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Polynesian long vowels
Copy and paste using: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū

Stevey7788 07:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Over-representation of Philippine languages?
Seven of the languages in the list are Philippine, about half of the total. On the other hand, there are no Formosan or Bornean languages at all. If possible I'd like to replace some of the Philippine languages with Formosan languages like Rukai or Seediq from entries on the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database.

Yshiye (talk) 11:05, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Rukai and Seediq (and also Atayal, Tsou, Puyuma, Truku, Saisiyat, etc.) have very low numbers of cognates with other Austronesian languages, and even those are barely recognizable. If your goal is to demonstrate a visible connection, I'd go with Amis, Bunun, or Paiwan. If, on the other hand, you want to show just how different the Formosan languages are, then you should probably go with Squliq Atayal and Tsou. Goderich (talk) 02:13, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

RFM discussion: September 2010–October 2022
See Appendix talk:Swadesh lists for Austronesian languages