Makassaric languages


The Makassaric languages are a group of languages spoken in the southern part of South Sulawesi province, Indonesia, and make up one of the branches of the South Sulawesi subgroup in the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member of this group is Makassarese, with over two million speakers in the city of Makassar and neighboring areas.
The status of the Makassaric languages other than Makassarese as distinct languages is not universally accepted. In older classifications, but also in recent studies by local linguists, they are considered to be dialects of the Makassarese language.

Languages

A characteristic feature of the Makassaric languages is the occurrence of echo vowels with stems ending in final /r/, /l/ or /s/. E.g. /botol/ "bottle" is realized as bótolo in Selayar and Coastal Konjo, and as bótoloʔ in Makassarese. This echo vowel is dropped if a suffix is added, but retained if followed by an enclitic.
MakassarSelayar
base/rantas/
rántasaʔ
'dirty'		/lambus/
lámbusu
'straight'
with suffix/rantas/ + /-aŋ/
rantás-aŋ
'dirtier'		/lambus/ + /-aŋ/
lambús-aŋ
'straighter'
with enclitic/rantas/ + /=ak/
rántasak=aʔ
'I am dirty'		/lambus/ + /=a/
lámbusu=a
'I am straight'