Size of phoneme inventory

Most Austronesian languages have between 16 and 22 consonants and 4 or 5 vowels. Exceptionally large consonant inventories are found in the languages of the Loyalty Islands in southern Melanesia, and exceptionally small consonant inventories in the Polynesian languages. Hawaiian has the second smallest inventory of phonemes, or distinctive sounds, of any known language, with just eight consonants (p, k, ‘ [glottal stop], m, n, l, h, and w) and five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u).

Vowel systems in Austronesian languages tend to be simple. Many languages in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia have just four contrasting vowels: i, u, a, and e, an indistinct mid-central vowel. The great majority of Oceanic languages have a five-vowel system: i, u, e, o, and a. Larger vowel systems are found in a number of Nuclear Micronesian languages, in some of the languages of Melanesia (such as Sakao of north-central Vanuatu), and in a few of the Chamic languages.

Phonetic types

In view of the large number of Austronesian languages it is not surprising that observers have recorded a wide range of speech sounds, including some that are quite rare in the world’s languages. Some Formosan languages have a uvular stop (written q), which is a consonant sound produced by drawing the backmost part of the tongue down to touch the wall of the pharynx. A number of the languages of Borneo and some other areas have unusual nasal consonants belonging to either of two types: “preploded” nasals, in which nasal consonants are heard as /-pm/, /-tn/, and /-kng/ at the end of a word, and what might be called “postploded” nasals /-mb-/, /-nd-/, or /-ngg-/, in which a nasal consonant between vowels is followed by a stop that is almost too short to hear.

Preglottalized or implosive consonants are found in several of the languages of central Taiwan, in a number of the languages of northwestern Borneo, in the Chamic languages of mainland Southeast Asia, and in several languages of the Lesser Sunda Islands. In Fijian and many other languages of Melanesia, voiced stops b, d, and g are automatically preceded by a nasal: mb, nd, and ngg. Perhaps the most unusual consonant types reported in Austronesian are prenasalized bilabial trills, made by trilling the lips following an m, and apico-labial stops (nasals and fricatives), which are made by touching the upper lip with the tip of the tongue. The former are quite common in the languages of Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands of western Melanesia, and the latter are found in a number of languages scattered throughout central Vanuatu.

Many Austroasiatic languages of the Mon-Khmer family found on mainland Southeast Asia distinguish two voice registers, a breathy, or “sepulchral,” voice (made by relaxing the vocal cords) and a clear voice (made by tensing the vocal cords). As a result of generations of bilingualism this feature has been acquired by most of the Chamic languages. Together with other Mon-Khmer characteristics, these areal adaptations in the Chamic languages caused Schmidt in 1906 to incorrectly classify them as “Austroasiatic mixed languages.” Where they have been further exposed to languages with lexical tone, as Eastern Cham (in contact with Vietnamese) or Tsat (in contact with both Chinese and Tai-Kadai tone languages on Hainan Island in southern China), at least two Chamic languages have become largely monosyllabic and tonal. Tonal contrasts are also reported for a few Austronesian languages in two widely separated parts of New Guinea and in southern New Caledonia. Despite contact with Chinese, which in some cases must date back at least three centuries, none of the aboriginal languages of Taiwan are tonal.

Many languages in the Philippines use stress to distinguish words that are otherwise identical in form, as in Tagalog sábat ‘design woven into cloth or matting’ versus sabát ‘stop pin or lug.’ Some languages outside the Philippines use accent contrasts to distinguish different forms of the same word, as in Toba Batak (northern Sumatra) gógo ‘push hard!’ versus gogó ‘strong’ or díla ‘tongue’ versus dilá ‘a big talker.’ The origin and history of accent contrasts remains one of the major unresolved problems in the study of the Austronesian languages.

Lexical semantics

Many common words in Austronesian languages are not easily translated into English or most other European languages. Examples of noncorrespondence can be seen in the comparison of several Malay words to English meanings: (1) one to many: Malay kaki corresponds to both ‘foot’ and ‘leg’ in English, (2) many to one: Malay rambut and bulu both correspond to English ‘hair,’ the former referring exclusively to hair of the head and the latter to body hair, downy feathers, plant floss, and the like, and (3) some combination of many to one and one to many: Malay adik corresponds to both ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in English but is used only to refer to siblings younger than the speaker; Malay kakak also means both ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ but is used to refer to older siblings. In many Austronesian languages there is no general term for the verbs ‘to cut’ or ‘to carry,’ or for the noun ‘root,’ but rather numerous terms to specify the type of activity or type of structure in much greater detail than is typical in European languages.

Speech levels and honorific registers

Javanese and several languages in close contact with it—including at least Sundanese and Balinese—have developed a linguistic reflection of social stratification. Javanese uses three speech levels, distinguished by choice of vocabulary. The primary distinction is between Kromo, a high form used when speaking to social superiors, and Ngoko, a low or neutral form used when speaking to social equals or inferiors. Further subdivisions are recognized within Kromo, and in addition a small number of words called Madya (Middle) contain elements of both Kromo and Ngoko styles. In Samoa a special vocabulary is used when addressing persons of chiefly rank.

Male-female speech differences are covert in many languages, evident chiefly in the greater frequency with which speakers of one sex use particular forms; in some languages, however, gender-associated differences become conventionalized and rigid. The most-notable case reported for an Austronesian language is in the Mayrinax dialect of Atayal in northern Taiwan, where women’s speech is historically a more conservative variety and men’s speech shows unpredictable changes in pronunciation owing to the addition of entire syllables to earlier word forms.

These innovations present in Atayal men’s speech may have originated as a form of speech disguise. In Tagalog and some other languages of the Philippines, as well as in Malay, forms of “backward speech” (which have as their primary purpose the concealment of messages) have been reported for adolescents. Such phenomena are functionally not unlike English pig Latin. Iban of northwestern Borneo shows an unusually large number of words with what appear to be reversals of the meanings found in cognates in other languages. This, too, may reflect an earlier tradition of speech disguise that succeeded in altering some meanings of the language for all speakers.