Makassarese (basa Mangkasaraʼ or basa Mangkasarak), sometimes called Makasar, Makassar, or Macassar, is a language of the Makassarese people, spoken in South Sulawesi province of Indonesia. It is a member of the South Sulawesi group of the Austronesian language family, and thus closely related to, among others, Buginese.

Makasar
Bahasa Makassar
ᨅᨔ ᨆᨀᨔᨑ Basa Mangkasaraʼ
Native to	Indonesia
Region	South Sulawesi (Sulawesi)
Ethnicity	Makassarese
Native speakers	2.1 million (2000 census)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian South Sulawesi Makassaric Makasar
Dialects	Gowa (Lakiung) Turatea Marusuʼ-Pangkajeneʼ
Writing system	Lontara (present) Latin (present) Serang (religious purpouse) Old Makassarese (historical)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	mak
ISO 639-3	mak
Glottolog	maka1311

This article contains Lontara script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Lontara characters.

Phonology

The following description of Makassarese phonology is based on Jukes (2005).[2]

Vowels

Makassarese has five vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. The mid vowels are lowered to [ɛ] and [ɔ] in absolute final position and in the vowel sequences /ea/ and /oa/.

Consonants

• /ɲ/ is written ⟨ny⟩ before a vowel, ⟨n⟩ before ⟨c⟩ and ⟨j⟩
• /ŋ/ is written ⟨ng⟩
• /ɟ/ is written ⟨j⟩
• /j/ is written ⟨y⟩
• /h/ only occurs in loanwords
• The glottal stop /ʔ/ only occurs in syllable-final position. It is written as ⟨k⟩ in the orthography promoted as the standard by the government and based on the practice in Indonesian language, as an apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ is other orthographic standards, or not written at all in informal writing.

Phonotactics

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', caʼdi 'small' + -i 'third person' > caʼdi 'it is small'.

Current writing systems

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.

Examples

Some common words/phrases in the Makasar language, transcribed in the Latin script, are as follows (ʼ = glottal stop):

Historical writing system

Makassarese was historically written using Makasar script (also known as "Old Makassarese" or "Makassarese bird script" in English-language scholarly works).[3] In Makassarese the script is known as ukiriʼ jangang-jangang or huruf jangang-jangang ('bird letters'). It was used for official purposes in the kingdoms of Makasar in the 17th century but ceased to be used by the 19th century, being replaced by Lontara script.

In spite of their quite distinctive appearance, both the Makasar and Lontara scripts are derived from the ancient Brahmi script of India. Like other descendants of that script, each consonant has an inherent vowel "a", which is not marked. Other vowels can be indicated by adding diacritics above, below, or on either side of each consonant.

See also

• Makassan contact with Australia

References

Further reading

• Jukes, Anthony (2020). A Grammar of Makasar: A Language of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Leiden & Boston: BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-41266-8.

External links

Look up Appendix:Makasar Swadesh list in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Makassarese language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Makassar pronunciation and alphabet at Omniglot
• Lontara and Makassar scripts
• Lontara Alphabet in Unicode
• http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/buginese/

На других языках

[de] Makassar-Sprache

[fr] Makassar (langue)

[ru] Макасарский язык