Makassarese language
Makassarese, sometimes called Makasar, Makassar, Macassar, or Macassan 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, also known as Bugis. The areas where Makassarese is spoken include the Gowa, Sinjai, Maros, Takalar, Jeneponto, Bantaeng, Pangkajene and Islands, Bulukumba, and Selayar Islands Regencies, and Makassar. Within the Austronesian language family, Makassarese is part of the South Sulawesi language group, although its vocabulary is considered divergent compared to its closest relatives. In 2000, Makassarese had approximately 2.1 million native speakers.
Classification
Makassarese is an Austronesian language from the South Sulawesi branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily, specifically the Makassaric group, which also includes both Highland and Coastal Konjo languages and the Selayar language. The Konjo and Selayar language varieties are sometimes considered dialects of Makassarese. As part of the South Sulawesi language family, Makassarese is also closely related to the Bugis, Mandar, and Toraja-Saʼdan languages.In terms of vocabulary, Makassarese is considered the most distinct among the South Sulawesi languages. The average percentage of vocabulary similarity between Makassarese and other South Sulawesi languages is only 43%. Specifically, the Gowa or Lakiung dialect is the most divergent; the vocabulary similarity of this dialect with other South Sulawesi languages is about 5–10 percentage points lower compared to the vocabulary similarity of Konjo and Selayar with other South Sulawesi languages. However, etymostatistical analysis and functor statistics conducted by linguist Ülo Sirk shows a higher vocabulary similarity percentage between Makassarese and other South Sulawesi languages. These quantitative findings support qualitative analyses that place Makassarese as part of the South Sulawesi language family.
Dialect
The language varieties within the Makassaric group form a dialect continuum. A language survey in South Sulawesi conducted by linguists and anthropologists Charles and Barbara Grimes separated the Konjo and Selayar languages from Makassarese. Meanwhile, a subsequent survey by linguists Timothy Friberg and Thomas Laskowske divided the Konjo language into three varieties: Coastal Konjo, Highland Konjo, and Bentong/Dentong. However, in a book on Makassarese grammar published by the Center for Language Development and Cultivation, local linguist Abdul Kadir Manyambeang and his team include the Konjo and Selayar varieties as dialects of Makassarese.Excluding the Konjo and Selayar varieties, Makassarese can be divided into at least three dialects: the Gowa or Lakiung dialect, the Jeneponto or Turatea dialect, and the Bantaeng dialect. The main differences among these varieties within the Makassar group lie in vocabulary; their grammatical structures are generally quite similar. Speakers of the Gowa dialect tend to switch to Indonesian when communicating with speakers of the Bantaeng dialect or with speakers of the Konjo and Selayar languages, and vice versa. The Gowa dialect is generally considered the prestige variety of Makassarese. As the dialect spoken in the central region, the Gowa dialect is also commonly used by speakers of other varieties within the Makassaric group.
Distribution
According to a demographic study based on the 2010 census data, about 1.87 million Indonesians over the age of five speak Makassarese as their mother tongue. Makassarese ranks 16th of top 20 local languages with the most speakers in Indonesia. Makassarese is also the second most-spoken language in Sulawesi after Bugis, which has over 3.5 million speakers.The Makassarese language is primarily spoken by the Makassar people, although a small percentage of the Bugis people also use it as their mother tongue. Makassarese speakers are concentrated in the southwestern peninsula of South Sulawesi, particularly in the fertile coastal areas around Makassar, Gowa Regency, and Takalar Regency. The language is also spoken by some residents of Maros Regency and Pangkajene and Islands Regency to the north, alongside Bugis. Residents of Jeneponto and Bantaeng Regencies generally identify themselves as part of the Makassarese-speaking community, although the varieties they speak differ significantly from the dialects used in Gowa and Takalar. The closely related Konjo language is spoken in the mountainous areas of Gowa and along the coast of Bulukumba Regency, while the Selayar language is spoken on Selayar Island, to the south of the peninsula.
Due to Makassarese contact with Aboriginal peoples in Northern Australia, a pidgin of Makassarese was used as lingua franca across the region between different Aboriginal groups, though its use declined starting in the early 20th century due to Australian restrictions against Makassarese fishermen in the region and was supplanted by English as a lingua franca.
Current status
Makassarese is one of the relatively well-developed regional languages in Indonesia. It is still widely used in rural areas and parts of Makassar city. Makassarese is also considered important as a marker of ethnic identity. However, in urban communities, code-switching or code-mixing between Makassar and Indonesian is commonly used. Some urban Makassar residents, especially those from the middle class or with multiethnic backgrounds, also use Indonesian as the primary language in their households. Ethnologue classifies Makassar as a 6b language on the EGIDS scale, indicating that although the language is still commonly used in daily conversations, the natural intergenerational transmission or teaching of the language is beginning to be disrupted.Phonology
Linguist Anthony Jukes described Makassarese phonology as follows:Vowels
Makassarese has five vowels:,,,,. The mid vowels are lowered to and in absolute final position and in the vowel sequences and.| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | |||
| Mid | |||
| Open |
The vowel phoneme tends to be realized as the open-mid vowel when it is at the end of a word or before a syllable containing the sound. Compare, for instance, the pronunciation of in the word leʼbaʼ 'already' with mange 'go to'. The phoneme also has an open-mid allophone when it is at the end of a word or precedes a syllable containing the sound , as seen in the word lompo 'big'. Regardless of their position within a word, some speakers tend to pronounce these two vowels with a higher tongue position, making their pronunciation approach that of the phonemes and.
Vowels can be pronounced nasally when they are around nasal consonants within the same syllable. There are two levels of nasalization intensity for vowels: strong nasalization and weak nasalization. Weak nasalization can be found on vowels before nasal consonants that are not at the end of a word. Strong nasalization can be found on vowels before final nasal consonants or generally after nasal consonants. Nasalization can spread to vowels in syllables after nasal vowels if there are no consonants blocking it. However, the intensity of nasalization in vowels like this is not as strong as in the vowels before them, as in the pronunciation of the word niaʼ 'there is'.
Consonants
There are 17 consonants in Makassarese, as outlined in the following table.Makassarese consonants except the glottal stop and voiced plosives can be geminated. Some instances of these might result from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian schwa phoneme *, which geminated the following consonant.
The phoneme is the only consonant with a dental pronunciation, unlike the phonemes, which are alveolar consonants. The voiceless plosive phonemes are generally pronounced with slight aspiration, as in the words katte 'we', lampa 'go', and kana 'say'. The phonemes and have implosive allophones and, especially in word-initial positions, such as in balu 'widow', and after the sound, as in aʼdoleng 'to let hang'. These two consonants, especially in word-initial positions, can also be realized as voiceless consonants without aspiration. The palatal phoneme can be realized as an affricate or even. The phoneme can also be pronounced as an affricate. Jukes analyzes both of these consonants as stop consonants because they have palatal nasal counterparts, just as other oral stop consonants have their own nasal counterparts.
Phonotactics
The basic structure of syllables in Makassarese is. The position of C1 can be filled by almost any consonant, while the position of C2 has some limitations. In syllables located at the end of a morpheme, C2 can be filled by a stop or a nasal, the pronunciation of which is determined by assimilation rules. The sound T assimilates with voiceless consonants except, and is realized as in other contexts. The sound N is realized as a homorganic nasal before a stop or nasal consonant, assimilates with the consonant's and, and is realized as in other contexts. On the other hand, in syllables within root forms, Makassarese contrasts an additional sound in the C2 position besides K and N, which is. This analysis is based on the fact that Makassarese distinguishes between the sequences,, and across syllables. However, can also be considered as the realization of a geminate segment rather than a sequence across syllables.The sounds can be categorized as non-nasal continuous consonants, and none of them can occupy the final position of a syllable except as part of a geminate consonant sequence. Basic words that actually end with these consonants will be appended with an epenthetic vowel identical to the vowel in the preceding syllable, and closed with a glottal stop, as in the words ótereʼ 'rope', bótoloʼ 'bottle', and rántasaʼ 'mess, untidy'. This additional element is also referred to as the "echo-VC", and it can affect the position of stress within a word.
Generally, base words in Makassarese consist of two or three syllables. However, longer words can be formed due to the agglutinative nature of Makassarese and the highly productive reduplication process. According to Jukes, words with six or seven syllables are commonly found in Makassarese, while base words with just one syllable are very rare, although there are some interjections and particles consisting of only one syllable.
All consonants except for can appear in initial position. In final position, only and are found.
Consonant clusters only occur medially and can be analyzed as clusters of or + consonant. These clusters also arise through sandhi across morpheme boundaries.
The geminate cluster 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'.