Mamasa language

Mamasa
Native to	Indonesia
Region	West Sulawesi
Ethnicity	Mamasa Pattae' (dialect speaker of Pattae')
Native speakers	89,000 (2010 Census)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian South Sulawesi Northern Toraja Mamasa
Dialects	Northern Mamasa Central Mamasa Pattae'
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mqj
Glottolog	mama1276

Mamasa is an Austronesian language spoken in West Sulawesi, Indonesia. This language is the native language of the Mamasa people which is related to the Toraja people.

Dialects

Three dialects can be distinguished:^[2]

• Northern Mamasa
• Central Mamasa
• Pattae'

Speakers of Pattae' are a culturally distinct ethnic group traditionally more affiliated to the Mandar people than to speakers of the Northern and Central Mamasa dialects in the interior, and for that reason Pattae' is considered by its speakers to be a language separate from Mamasa proper (i.e. Northern and Central Mamasa).

Phonology

Mamasa has the following consonants and vowels:^[3]

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d		g
Fricative			s
Lateral			l
Trill			r
Semivowel		w		j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

References

1. Mamasa at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. "The Mamasa Language". Sulawesi Language Alliance. Archived from the original on 14 December 2017. Retrieved 14 Dec 2017.
3. Smith, Beverly Kean (1993). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Pitu Ulunna Salu (M.A. thesis). University of Texas at Arlington. OCLC 840034799.

Further reading

• Matti, David F. (1991). "Phonology of Mamasa" (PDF). In Rene van den Berg (ed.). Workpapers in Indonesian Languages and Cultures (PDF). Vol. 12, Sulawesi phonologies. Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. 53–97. ISBN 979-8132-85-8.