Makasar language
| Makassar | |
|---|---|
| Bahasa Makassar | |
| ᨅᨔ ᨆᨀᨔᨑ Basa Mangkasara' | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | southern tip of South Sulawesi, Sulawesi (Celebes) |
|
Native speakers
|
2.1 million (2000 census) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Lontara, Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | mak |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | maka1311 |
Makassarese (sometimes spelled Makasar, Makassar, or Macassar) is a language used by the Makassarese people in South Sulawesi in Indonesia. It is a member of the South Sulawesi group of the Austronesian language family, and thus closely related to, among others, Buginese.
Makassarese has five vowels: a, e, i, o, u.
All consonants except for /ʔ/ can appear in initial position. In final position, only /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ are found.
Consonant clusters only occur medially and (with one exception) can be analyzed as clusters of /ŋ/ or /ʔ/ + consonant. These clusters also arise through sandhi across morpheme boundaries.
The geminate cluster /rr/ is only found in root-internal position and cannot be accounted for by the above rules.
Sequences of like vowels are contracted to a single vowel, e.g. sassa "to wash" + -ang 'nominalizing suffix' > sassáng "laundry", ca'di "small" + -i 'third person' > ca'di "it is small".
Although Makassarese is now often written in Latin script, it is still widely written using Lontara script, which once was used also to write important documents in Bugis and Mandar, two related languages from Sulawesi.
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Wikipedia