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(image taken from the Digital Museum of Taiwan Indigenous People - http://www.dmtip.gov.tw/Eng/amis.htm)
Amis is one of the many indigenous languages of Taiwan along with Atayal, Paiwan, Puyuma, Bunun, Tsou, Thao, etc., to name a few. Like the other indigenous languages of Taiwan, Amis is (distantly) related to the languages of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maori, Hawaii, etc. These languages form the Austronesian group of languages. Unfortunately, these indigenous languages of Taiwan are in the brink of extinction as they are slowly replaced by the more widely used Chinese Mandarin.
I have created a table comparing basic words in Amis and Tagalog (Pilipino). Please click here.
The Amis Language - taken from Wikipedia:
Amis is the Formosan language of the Amis (or Ami), an indigenous tribal people living along the east coast of Taiwan (see Taiwanese aborigines). It is spoken from Hualien in the north to Taitung in the south, with another population near the southern end of the island, though the northern varieties are sometimes considered a separate language.Government services in counties where many Amis people live in Taiwan, such as the Hualien and Taitung train stations, broadcast in Amis alongside Mandarin. However, few Amis under the age of 20 in 1995 spoke the language, and it is not known how many of the 138,000 ethnic Amis are speakers.
Click here for more info about the Amis Language (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amis_language
The Austronesian Languages - taken from Wikipedia:
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members on continental Asia, that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger–Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the best-established ancient language families. Otto Dempwolff, a German scholar, was the first researcher to extensively explore Austronesian using the comparative method. Another German scholar, Wilhelm Schmidt, coined the German word austronesisch[1] which comes from Latin auster "south wind" plus Greek nêsos "island". The name Austronesian was formed from the same roots. The family is aptly named, as the vast majority of Austronesian languages are spoken on islands: only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people and one Austronesian language, Malay, is spoken by 180 million people, making it the 8th most spoken language in the world. Twenty or so Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of Austronesian languages).Different sources count languages differently, but Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world, each having roughly one-fifth of the total languages counted in the world. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period, ranging from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. Hawaiian, Rapanui, and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) are the geographic outliers of the Austronesian family.According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided in several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively on Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan (including its offshore Yami language) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch, sometimes called Extra-Formosan.
Click here for more info about the Austronesian languages (Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages
Austronesian languages expansion map. Periods are based on archeological studies, though the association of the archeological record and linguistic reconstructions is disputed. (Image and caption taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages)
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All of the tracks included in my live mixes are not my work, unless otherwise stated. I do not receive any monetary compensation for doing my live shows. My activities on aNONradio.net and Tilderadio are/were/have always been strictly a personal hobby. aNONradio.net and Tilderadio are both for-hobby, not-for-profit, non-commercial and fully volunteer-member-run and funded Internet radio services. If your track/piece of work gets included in my mixes then it means that I love and admire you and your work and I am in effect promoting you and your work to my listeners for free.
However, if you are an artist and are still not satisfied with my explanation in the above paragraph, please contact me.
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