Cia-Cia language


Cia-Cia, also known as Buton or Butonese, is an Austronesian language spoken principally around the city of Baubau on the southern tip of Buton Island off the southeast coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
In 2009, the language gained international media attention as the city of Baubau was teaching children to read and write Cia-Cia in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and the mayor consulted the Indonesian government on the possibility of making the writing system official.
However, the project encountered difficulties between the city of Baubau, the Hunminjeongeum Society, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2011, and was abandoned in 2012. As of 2017 it remains in use in schools and on local signs.

Demographics

As of 2005 there were 80,000 speakers. Speakers also use Wolio, which is closely related to Cia-Cia, as well as Indonesian, the national language of Indonesia. Wolio is falling into disuse as a written language among the Cia-Cia, as it is written using the Arabic script and Indonesian is now taught in schools with the Latin script.

Geographic distribution

Cia-Cia is spoken in Southeast Sulawesi, south Buton Island, Binongko Island, and Batu Atas Island.
According to legend, Cia-Cia speakers on Binonko descend from Butonese troops sent by a Butonese Sultan.

Name

The name of the language comes from the negator cia "no". It is also known as Buton, Butonese, Butung, and in Dutch Boetonees, names it shares with Wolio, and as South Buton or Southern Butung.

Dialects

The language situation on the island of Buton is very complicated and not known in great detail.
Dialects include Kaesabu, Sampolawa, Wabula, and Masiri. The Masiri dialect shows the greatest amount of vocabulary in common with the standard dialect. Konisi & Hidayat discuss two dialects, Pesisir and Pedalaman; Pedalaman has gh in native words where Pesisir has r, but has r in loan words.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Cia-Cia was once written in a Jawi-like script, called Gundhul, based on Arabic with five additional consonant letters but no signs for vowels.
In 2009, residents of the city of Baubau attempted to adopt Hangul, the script for the Korean language, as their script for writing Cia-Cia.
* ᄙ is not a separate letter. The medial /r/ and /l/ are distinguished by writing a single letter for /r/ and double for /l/. Double ㄹ must be written in two syllables. The final /l/ is written with a single letter ㄹ; for the final consonant /r/, the null vowel is added. Null consonant and vowel letters are added for initial /l/.
An example of the proposed Hangul script and followed by Latin and IPA alphabet:

Words

The numerals 1-10 are:

Citations