In linguistics, the
Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by
Robert Blust that all the languages of the
Philippines and northern
Sulawesi—except
Sama–Bajaw (languages of the "Sea Gypsies") and a few languages of
Palawan—form a
subfamily of
Austronesian languages. Although the Philippines is near the center of
Austronesian expansion from
Formosa, there is little linguistic diversity among the approximately 150 Philippine languages, suggesting that earlier diversity has been erased by the spread of the ancestor of the modern Philippine languages. Philippine languages make up the oldest non-
Formosan languages of the Austronesian language family, with several languages preserving the proto-Austronesian
schwa and d–r assonance lost in the
Sunda–Sulawesi languages.