Talk:Austronesia

message: I find it odd to have a paragraph discussing the Austronesian language family and then introduce a hypothesis by anthropologists as to the location of the homeland. I have never heard that anthros believe the Yunnan plateau in China to be the homeland (there may well be some who do), but I know that linguists who specialise in Austronesian historical linguistics consider Taiwan to be the Austronesian homeland.
Additionally, I've never heard of the term Austronesia being used to refer to the 'homeland of the people who speak Austronesian languages' (presumably this is referring to the location of the speakers of Proto-Austronesian, the postulated parent language from which all Austronesian languages descend)--could we have a reference to some publication where this usage actually occurs? Dougg 09:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The languages are generally agreed to be traceable to Taiwan, but it is hypothesized (mainly by people trying to connect it to other language stocks) to have come from the mainland originally. Which of those should be the "homeland" I guess is a matter of semantics, but it does seem that Taiwan is more common. I guess I don't see why it's relevant here, though, instead of, say, Austronesian languages. Unless there is that usage of the word Austronesia to mean the homeland, but I haven't heard that either. Rigadoun 16:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Agreed on the homeland issue. I don't understand your last point. You've never heard the word Austronesia as a region, only the adjective Austronesian in reference to languages? In other words, are you arguing this article shouldn't exist? Rigadoun 15:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I haven't seen them either. I've encountered the term as a geographic area, in which case it may include New Guinea or Australia. This seems to be supported by the dictionary definitions at  onelook.com; unfortunately, none of them offer an etymology, word history, or date of citation. I'm watching this page just because of a major cleanup I did, without really adding new information. I can't vouch for what it says here, other than the subregions named. I would be inclined to agree that the use of the term as a linguistic region is a backformation from the language family, but I can't offer any evidence. Rigadoun 15:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Austronesian homeland 

message: I was heartened to read that Rigadoun had done a "major cleanup" in 2006, but disappointed to discover that many of the sentences in this article today, in 2009, are grammatically incorrect, confusing, or both.  I would like to clear up these difficulties, but believe I could easily make matters worse!  Ideally, an anthropologist would clean up the page, for both grammar and sense.  Bearing in mind the Wikipedia Policy "There is no deadline", I therefore propose to wait a little while to let this happen; but if it doesn't, I might have a crack at it anyway.
yoyo (talk) 06:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  (English) grammar 

message: in dis article it is says that filipinos is astronesians! but we are not! we are asians that are catholic. only catholics in asia. we not pacific islands not astronedians either!!! pls fix dis! Presidentbalut (talk) 03:21, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: See Tagalog language. Austronesian languages include much more than Pacific languages. Religion has nothing to do with this.-gadfium 08:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  philipines is not astronesions!!!