Austronesian language of South Sulawesi, Indonesia
Makassarese (, ), 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, 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 (≥ 60%) 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. Nationally, Makassarese ranks 16th among the 20 languages with the most speakers. Makassar 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 (1.89%) 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 (the Jeneponto or Turatea dialect and the Bantaeng dialect) 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. 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 common. 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 (Threatened) language on the EGIDS scale, indicating that although the language is still commonly used in face-to-face conversations, the natural intergenerational transmission or teaching of the language is beginning to be disrupted.
Phonology.
The following description of Makassarese phonology is based on Jukes (2005).
Vowels.
Makassarese has five vowels: , , , , . The mid vowels are lowered to and in absolute final position and in the vowel sequences and .
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 'already' with 'go to'. The phoneme also has an open-mid allophone [ɔ] when it is at the end of a word or precedes a syllable containing the sound [ɔ], as seen in the word 'big' (compare with 'heavy'). Regardless of their position within a word, some speakers tend to pronounce these two vowels with a higher (closer) 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 '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 "*" (now merged into ""), which geminated the following consonant ("*bəli" ; "*bəlli" ; 'to buy, price' (compare Indonesian ), contrasting with 'to oppose').
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 (a flow of air), as in the words 'we', 'go', and 'say'. The phonemes and have implosive allophones and , especially in word-initial positions, such as in 'widow', and after the sound , as in '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 (a stop sound with a release of fricative) 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 (C1)V(C2). 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 (T) or a nasal (N), the pronunciation of which is determined by assimilation rules. The sound T assimilates with (is pronounced the same as) voiceless consonants except , and is realized as in other contexts. The sound N is realized as a homorganic nasal (pronounced at the same articulation place) 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 (sounds produced without fully obstructing the flow of air through the mouth) 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 'rope', 'bottle', and 'mess, untidy'. This additional element is also referred to as the "VC-geminate" (echo-VC) sequence, 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 (that are not borrowed from other languages) 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 (with one exception) 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., 'to wash' + 'nominalizing suffix' ; 'laundry', 'small' + 'third person' ; 'it is small'.
Stress.
The stress is generally placed on the penultimate (second-last) syllable of a base word. In reduplicated words, secondary stress will be placed on the first element, as in the word 'to fish (casually)'. Suffixes are generally counted as part of the phonological unit receiving stress, while enclitics are not counted (extrametrical). For example, the word 'strong', if the benefactive suffix is added, becomes 'stronger than' with stress on the penultimate syllable, but if given the first-person marker enclitic , it becomes 'I am strong', with stress on the antepenultimate syllable (third-last).
Other morphemes counted as part of the stress-bearing unit include the affixal clitic, marking possession, as in the word (buffalo=.) 'my buffalo'. Particularly for the definite marker , this morpheme is counted as part of the stress-bearing unit only if the base word it attaches to ends in a vowel, as in the word 'the stone'—compare with the stress pattern in 'the dog', where the base word ends in a consonant. A word can have stress on the preantepenultimate (fourth-last) syllable if a two-syllable enclitic combination such as ( , ) is appended; e.g., 'go up!' The stress position can also be influenced by the process of vocalic degemination, where identical vowels across morphemes merge into one. For example, the word 'walk', when the suffix -ang is added, becomes 'to walk with', with stress on the ultimate (last) syllable.
The stress on base words with VC-geminate always falls on the antepenultimate syllable; for example, 'layer', 'bottle', 'market', and 'Makassar', because syllables with VK-geminate are extrametrical. However, the addition of suffixes and will remove this epenthetic syllable and move the stress to the penultimate position, as in the word 'to layer'. Adding the possessive clitic suffix also shifts the stress to the penultimate position but does not remove this epenthetic syllable, as in the word 'its bottle'. Meanwhile, the addition of the definite marker and enclitics neither remove nor alter the stress