Mahafaly dialect

Mahafaly
Mahafaly
Native to	Madagascar;
Region	Atsimo-Andrefana region, southwest Madagascar
Ethnicity	Mahafaly people
Native speakers	472,000
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Barito languages Malagasy Southern Malagasic Mahafaly; ; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin script (Malagasy alphabet);
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tdx
Glottolog	maha1309
Linguasphere	31-LDA-cb
	Mahafaly dialect sample Two Mahafaly men from Betioky Atsimo complaining about bandit attacks and saying that they will retaliate and use mob justice if the state does not intervene.

Mahafaly is a dialect of the Malagasy language^[2]^[3] spoken by the Mahafaly people in the Atsimo-Andrefana region of southwestern Madagascar.^[4]

Classification

Mahafaly belongs to the Austronesian languages family under the Malayo-Polynesian languages branch, within the Barito languages group. It is classified as a Southern Malagasic dialect alongside Southern Sakalava,Tandroy, Vezo, Masikoro and Karimbola.^[5]

Mahafaly is spoken by approximately 472,000 people in the arid southwest of Madagascar, mainly in the Atsimo-Andrefana region.^[6]

^ "Mahafaly in Madagascar". Joshua Project. Retrieved 29 June 2025. Population 472,000
^ Grimes, Barbara F. (2000). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (14th ed.). Summer Institute of Linguistics. p. 293. ISBN 9780883128152.
^ McElroy, Colleen J. (1999). Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar. University of Michigan Press. p. xxii.
^ Ferrand, Gabriel (1903). Essai de phonétique comparée du malais et des dialectes malgaches : thèse pour le doctorat d'université (in French). Paris: Ernest Leroux, Libraire-Éditeur. p. XXXIX.
^ Bright, William (1992). International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. p. 205. ISBN 9780195051964.
^ Molet, Louis (1957). Petit guide de toponymie malgache (PDF) (in French). Tananarive: Scientific Research Institute of Madagascar, Department of Human Sciences. pp. map (unnumbered) + p. 7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link) The map is placed before the numbered pages.

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