Malagasy is the westernmost Austronesian language and belongs to the South East Barito subgroup of the Western Malayo-Polynesian subfamily (Dahl 1988, Rasoloson & Rubino 2005). Dahl (1951) presents widely-accepted evidence that Malagasy is most closely related to the Indonesian language Ma’anyan of Kalimantan (South Borneo). The term Malagasy refers to a macrolanguage (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014), with many regional dialects distributed throughout the island of Madagascar, which lies off the east African coast across from Mozambique (see Figure 1) and has a population of over 22 million (INSTAT 2018). The central area of the country, or the ‘Central Highlands’, is a plateau of up to 5000 feet and includes the capital city of Antananarivo, with a metropolitan population of about four million. The dialect historically spoken in and around Antananarivo is called Merina, and it served as the primary basis for development of the standardized, institutional language referred to as Malagasy Ofisialy ‘Official Malagasy’ (OM).

中文翻译：

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马达加斯加中部

马达加斯加语是最西端的南岛语，属于西马来-波利尼西亚亚科的东南巴里托亚组（Dahl 1988，Rasoloson & Rubino 2005）。Dahl (1951) 提出了被广泛接受的证据，证明马达加斯加语与加里曼丹（南婆罗洲）的印度尼西亚语 Ma'anyan 关系最为密切。马达加斯加语一词是指一种宏观语言（Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014），在马达加斯加岛上分布着许多地方方言，马达加斯加岛位于莫桑比克对面的东非海岸（见图 1），人口超过 2200 万（INSTAT 2018）。该国的中部地区或“中央高地”是一个高达 5000 英尺的高原，包括首都塔那那利佛，大都市人口约为 400 万。马达加斯加官方“官方马达加斯加”（OM）。