The Minahasan languages are a group of languages spoken by the Minahasa

Minahasa

The Minahasa are an ethnic group located in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia, formerly known as North Celebes...

 people in northern Sulawesi

Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

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Classification

The languages are (with individual languages marked by italics) (Sneddon 1978:9):

• Tonsawang
• North Minahasan
  • Tontemboan
    Tontemboan language
    Tontemboan is an Austronesian language, perhaps a Philippine language, of northern Sulawesi, Indonesia....
    
    
  • Northeast: Tondano, Tombulu
    Tombulu language
    Tombulu, Minahasa, is an Austronesian language, perhaps a Philippine language, of northern Sulawesi, Indonesia....
    
     (Minahasa), Tonsea

Adelaar and Himmelmann (2005) classified Sangiric

Sangiric languages

The Sangiric languages are a group of languages spoken in northern Sulawesi and several small islands to the north which belong to the Philippines.The languages are Sangir and a southern group of Bantik, Ratahan, Talaud....

 and Minahasan as branches of the Philippine languages

Philippine languages

The Philippine languages are a 1991 proposal by Robert Blust that all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi—except Sama–Bajaw and a few languages of Palawan—form a subfamily of Austronesian languages...

. However, a 2008 analysis of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database found moderate (80%) support for a Sangir–Minahasan family, which it placed among the Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages

Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages

The Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian languages are a branch of the Austronesian family, proposed by Wouk & Ross , that are thought to have dispersed from a possible homeland in Sulawesi. They are called nuclear because they are the conceptual core of the Malayo-Polynesian family, including both Malay and...

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