Formosan

The Formosan languages are the Austronesian tongues of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. They are not a single family: they are divided into as many as nine primary branches of Austronesian, and Taiwan is widely held to be the original homeland from which the tenth branch, Malayo-Polynesian, spread across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Of the roughly two dozen recorded languages, among the largest are Amis, Bunun, Paiwan and Tsou, while Siraya on the southwestern plains served as a regional lingua franca. Several gained a romanized script under Dutch colonial rule from 1624 to 1662, when missionaries compiled word lists and religious texts in Siraya. Long contact with Chinese settlers afterwards pushed many of these languages into decline.