DDeden Wrote:
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> Rather I was looking at the 1-8 numeral system
> parallels to other languages.

Words are added to a language from another language if two conditions are met:
1) they're in frequent contact with speakers of the other language
2) there's something about trade with that other group that requires them to learn those words.

The Austronesians had words for numerals, so even if you imagined a linguistic missionary whose only job was to show up and teach "poor blighted savages" how to say their numbers in the missionary's language rather than their own language, there's no reason for the people to adopt them.

They did trade and have language exchange with the Hindus.

> There's seems to be
> good fit to many early IE languages numbers, but
> not to later ones. The European traders in the
> Malay Archipelago from the 1500s may have used
> Occitan or Breton or Welsh, I don't know.

Those languages were seldom spoken outside their own homelands. Although people from those areas might have traveled on ship, they'd be on English, Spanish, Portugese, French, Chinese, or other trading vessels... where other languages were spoken.

And in any case, there's no reason for them to adopt those languages or sounds when (as we know from material dating 400 AD and onwards) they already had perfectly good words for those numbers and for many other concepts. They wrote them down.