The Malagasy language is unrelated to nearby African languages, instead being the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, a fact noted as long ago as the eighteenth century. It is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and more closely with the South-east Barito group of languages spoken in Borneo except for its Polynesian morphophonemics.[1] Malagasy shares much of its basic vocabulary with Maanyan, a language from the region of the Barito River in southern Borneo. This indicates that Madagascar was first settled by Austronesian people who had come from Borneo, though it is not clear precisely when or why such colonisation took place. Later, the original Austronesian settlers must have mixed with East Africans and Arabs, amongst others.[2] The Malagasy language also includes borrowings from Bantu languages (notably Swahili), and Arabic, as well as from French (the former colonial rulers of Madagascar) and English (spoken by 18th century pirates as well as Christian missionaries from Great Britain).
The language has a written literature going back to the 15th century. Malagasy has a rich tradition of oral and poetic histories and legends. The most famous is the national epic, Ibonia, about a Malagasy folk hero of the same name.
The first book to be printed in Malagasy is the Bible, which was translated into Malagasy in 1835 by British Christian missionaries[3] working in the highlands area of Madagascar. The first bilingual renderings of religious texts are those by Etienne de Flacourt [4], who also published the first dictionary of the language.[5]

wtf, there's way too many people 'related' (genetically and linguistically) to filipinos don't mean we have to make our own wikipedia-based thread on it.

not all people of madagascar are black, some look like seasian and a lot of them speak french like this dude i've met.