The Austric family of languages includes languages spoken in India, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific
Islands. It is divided into two branches, Austroasiatic and Austronesian, the latter formerly called
Malayo-Polynesian. The Austroasiatic branch has three sub-branches: Munda, Mon-Khmer, and
Vietnamese-Muong. The Munda languages are spoken in southern India. Best-known of the Mon-
Khmer languages is Khmer (formerly called Cambodian), while Vietnamese belongs to the Vietnamese-
Muong sub-branch. Austronesian is divided into four sub-branches: Malayan, Melanesian, Micronesian,
and Polynesian. Among Malayan languages are Bahasa Indonesia, Balinese, Javanese, Ilocano,
Tagalog, and Visayan -- the latter three spoken in the Philippines. Fijian is the best-known Melanesian
language. The Micronesian sub-branch includes the languages of various small island groups:
Caroline, Gilbertese, Marianne, Marshallese, Truk, and Yapese. The Polynesian languages include
Hawaiian, Rarotongan, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan, and Maori -- the language of the New Zealand
aborigines. Please note that only those languages for which the Mansfield Library has some
holdings are listed here.
