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I read on Wikipedia that the language that Hawaiian comes from, distantly, is called Proto-Austronesian. It says that it had more sounds/phonemes was spoken around Taiwan and Southern China. However, I searched for when it was spoken, and there was no information on that topic, or even the word BC for that matter. So, when was it spoken?

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    As @Draconis put it recently in another answer, a Proto-language is not really a language, but a reconstruction, sort of like a stick-figure drawing of The Last Supper. It almost certainly does not describe any language that was ever spoken by a single human being; maybe one or two dialects, but which ones?
    – jlawler
    Nov 7, 2019 at 23:25

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This map from Wikipedia assigns dates to the Austronesian expansion, and Proto-Austronesian on Taiwan dates back to before 3000 BC. The line below the map says that the dates are coming from archeological findings and aren't determined by linguistic methods.

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  • That was a very nice description.
    – Number File
    Nov 27, 2019 at 1:37

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