Native to Indonesia ISO 639-2 mak | Writing system Lontara, Latin | |
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Region southern tip of South Sulawesi, Sulawesi (Celebes) Native speakers 2.1 million (2000 census) Language family Austronesian
Malayo-Polynesian (MP)
Nuclear MP
South Sulawesi
Makassar languages
Makassar | ||
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.
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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.
Makassarese was historically written using Makasar script (also known as "Old Makassarese" or "Makassarese bird script" in English-language scholarly works). In Makassarese the script is known as ukiri' 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.
Examples
Some common words/phrases in the Makassar language, transcribed in the Latin script, are as follows ( ' = glottal stop):