Collective term for the languages of the southeast Asian islands, New Guinea, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The most important language groups in this area are Malayo-Polynesian, which is spread over nearly the entire Pacific, the southeast Asian...

The Oceanic languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, containing approximately 450 languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Despite covering such a vast...