Buginese language

Classification

Buginese belongs to the South Sulawesi subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Within the South Sulawesi subgroup, it is most closely related to Campalagian and the Tamanic outlier in West Kalimantan.

Geographical distribution

Most of the native speakers (around 3 million) are concentrated in South Sulawesi, Indonesia but there are small groups of Buginese speakers on the island of Java, Samarinda and east Sumatra of Indonesia, east Sabah and Malay Peninsula, Malaysia and South Philippines. This Bugis diaspora is the result of migration since the 17th century that was mainly driven by continuous warfare situations. (Dutch direct colonization started in the early 20th century.)

Phonology

Buginese has six vowels: , , , , , and the central vowel .

The following table gives the consonant phonemes of Buginese together with their representation in Lontara script.

When Buginese is written in Latin script, general Indonesian spelling conventions are applied: is represented by ⟨ny⟩, by ⟨ng⟩, by ⟨j⟩, by ⟨y⟩. The glottal stop is usually represented by an apostrophe (e.g. ana' 'child'), but occasionally ⟨q⟩ is also used. and are usually uniformly spelled as ⟨e⟩, but is often written as ⟨é⟩ to avoid ambiguity.

Grammar

Pronouns

Buginese has four sets of personal pronouns, one free set, and three bound sets:

The enclitic set is used with subjects of intransitive verbs, and objects of transitive verbs. The proclitic set is with subjects of transitive verbs. The suffixed set is primarily used in possessive function.

Aspects

The following are grammatical aspects of the language:

Examples

A:

ᨄᨘᨑᨊᨚ

pura-no

have [portmanteau of perfective na (ᨊ) + you]

ᨆᨙᨋ?

manre

eat

'Have you already eaten?'

B:

ᨉᨙᨄ

deq-pa

not + [conditional (ᨄ)]

'Not yet.'

⟨q⟩ represents the glottal stop. It is not written in the Lontara script.

Example of usage:

ᨆᨙᨒᨚ ᨀ

méloq-kaq

want-I

ᨌᨛᨆᨙ

cemmé

bathe

I want to take a bath

Writing system

Buginese was traditionally written using the Lontara script, of the Brahmic family, which is also used for the Makassar language and the Mandar language. The name Lontara derives from the Malay word for the palmyra palm, lontar, the leaves of which are the traditional material for manuscripts in India, South East Asia and Indonesia. Today, however, it is often written using the Latin script.

Buginese lontara

The Buginese lontara (locally known as Aksara Ugi) has a slightly different pronunciation from the other lontaras like the Makassarese. Like other Indic scripts, it also utilizes diacritics to distinguish the vowels , , , and from the default inherent vowel (actually pronounced ) implicitly represented in all base consonant letters (including the zero-consonant a).

But unlike most other Brahmic scripts of India, the Buginese script traditionally does not have any virama sign (or alternate half-form for vowel-less consonants, or subjoined form for non-initial consonants in clusters) to suppress the inherent vowel, so it is normally impossible to write consonant clusters (a few ones were added later, derived from ligatures, to mark the prenasalization), geminated consonants or final consonants.

Dialects and sub-dialects

The Bugis still distinguish themselves according to their major precolony states (Bone, Wajo, Soppeng, and Sidenreng) or groups of petty states (around Pare-Pare, Sinjai, and Suppa). The languages of these areas, with their relatively minor differences from one another, have been largely recognized by linguists as constituting dialects: recent linguistic research has identified eleven of them, most comprising two or more sub-dialects.

The following Buginese dialects are listed in the Ethnologue: Bone (Palakka, Dua Boccoe, Mare), Pangkep (Pangkajane), Camba, Sidrap (Sidenreng, North Pinrang, Alitta), Pasangkayu (Ugi Riawa), Sinjai (Enna, Palattae, Bulukumba), Soppeng (Kessi), Wajo, Barru (Pare-Pare, Nepo, Soppeng Riaja, Tompo, Tanete), Sawitto (Pinrang), Luwu (Luwu, Bua Ponrang, Wara, Malangke-Ussu).

Numbers

The numbers are:

Sample text

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 1) in the Buginese language (written in Lontara alphabet):

ᨔᨗᨊᨗᨊ ᨑᨘᨄ ᨈᨕᨘ ᨑᨗ ᨍᨍᨗᨕᨊᨁᨗ ᨑᨗᨒᨗᨊᨚᨕᨙ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨆᨊᨙᨊᨁᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨊᨁᨙ ᨕᨒᨙᨅᨗᨑᨙ᨞ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨊᨁᨙ ᨕᨀᨒᨙ᨞ ᨊᨄᨘᨊᨕᨗ ᨑᨗᨕᨔᨙᨊᨁᨙ ᨕᨈᨗ ᨆᨑᨙᨊᨗ ᨊ ᨔᨗᨅᨚᨒᨙ ᨅᨚᨒᨙᨊ ᨄᨉ ᨔᨗᨄᨀᨈᨕᨘ ᨄᨉ ᨆᨔᨒᨔᨘᨑᨙ᨞

Transliteration:

Sininna rupa tau ri jajiangngi rilinoe nappunnai manengngi riasengnge alebbireng. Nappunai riasengnge akkaleng, nappunai riasengnge ati marennni na sibole bolena pada sipakatau pada massalasureng.

Trivia

• A Buginese poem is painted on a wall near the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, Netherlands, as one of the wall poems in Leiden.