Interesting facts about the language

Around 19 million people worldwide speak Malagasy, with most Malagasy speakers – with a few exceptions – living on the island of Madagascar. The language is also spoken sporadically on the neighboring islands. Alongside Malagasy, French is the second official language in Madagascar, a fact rooted in France's long colonial rule over Madagascar. In addition to these two official languages, many indigenous dialects are spoken; they are cultivated and kept alive by the various ethnic groups living in Madagascar. Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian language family. This language family extends over a vast area from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan and Hawaii to New Zealand. More precisely, Malagasy is a West Austronesian language that belongs to the Barito language group. Its closest relative is Ma'anyan, spoken on Borneo. The reason for this relationship is that Austronesian settlers migrated from Taiwan to present-day Madagascar, via the Philippines, Timor, and finally to Borneo and Sumatra, and then along the Indian and African coasts. The Malagasy language, called Malagasy in Malagasy, developed around 1,000 years ago from various dialects spoken in Madagascar and was influenced by several foreign languages, such as Persian, Old Indic, and various African Bantu languages.

The Malagasy spoken today also incorporates elements of French and English. Furthermore, French expressions are often used when a Malagasy expression is unavailable or too long. Therefore, prior knowledge of French definitely makes a trip to the country easier. When learning Malagasy, knowledge of the Indonesian language is certainly advantageous, as there are similarities there too. At the beginning of the 19th century, European missionaries brought the Latin script to Madagascar. This replaced the previously used Sorabe script, which was developed by Arab settlers in the 11th century. The current Malagasy alphabet is therefore similar to ours, except that the letters c, q, u, w, and x, as well as the umlauts, are missing. It therefore has only 21 letters. This naturally makes it easier for Europeans to learn Malagasy, as they don't have to worry about learning a new script and can start learning the vocabulary right away.