Malagasy (; ) is an Austronesian language and the national language of Madagascar. Malagasy is the westernmost Malayo-Polynesian language, brought to Madagascar by the settlement of Austronesian peoples from the Sunda islands around the 5th century AD. The Malagasy language is one of the Barito languages and is most closely related to the Ma'anyan language, still spoken on Borneo to this day. Malagasy also includes numerous Malay loanwords, from the time of the early Austronesian settlement and trading between Madagascar and the Sunda Islands. After c. 1000 AD, Malagasy incorporated numerous Bantu and Arabic loanwords, brought over by traders and new settlers. Malagasy is spoken by around 25 million people in Madagascar and the Comoros. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language, as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere. Malagasy is divided between two main dialect groups; Eastern and Western. The central plateau of the island, where the capital Antananarivo and the old heartland of the Merina Kingdom is located, speaks the Merina dialect. The Merina dialect is the basis of Standard Malagasy, which is used by the government and media in Madagascar. Standard Malagasy is one of two official languages of Madagascar alongside French, in the 2010 constitution of the Fourth Republic of Madagascar. Malagasy is written in the Latin script introduced by Western missionaries in the early 19th century. Previously, the Sorabe script was used, a local development of the Arabic script. Classification The Malagasy language is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, a grouping that includes languages from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Pacific Islands. In fact, Malagasy's relation with other Austronesian languages had already been noted by early scholars, such as the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland in 1708. Among all Austronesian languages, Dahl (1951) demonstrated that Malagasy and Ma'anyan – an East Barito language spoken in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia on the island of Borneo – were particularly closely related. The language also has apparent influence from early Old Malay. Furthermore, there appears to be a Bantu influence or substratum in Malagasy phonotactics (Dahl 1988). Later, Adelaar (1995) suggested that the vocabulary of Malagasy also contains many words that are of South Sulawesi origin. Further evidence for this suggestion was presented by Blench (2018). Etymology Malagasy is the demonym of Madagascar, from which it is taken to refer to the people of Madagascar in addition to