Malay is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore. Indonesian, a standardized Malay-based national variety, is the official language of Indonesia and is one of working languages in East Timor. Malay is also spoken as a regional language of ethnic Malays in Indonesia and the southern part of Thailand. Altogether, it is spoken by 290 million people across Maritime Southeast Asia.
Central Sulawesi is a province of Indonesia located at the centre of the island of Sulawesi. The administrative capital and largest city is located in Palu. The province borders the provinces of Gorontalo to the east, Southeast Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, and West Sulawesi to the south, and sharing maritime borders with East Kalimantan to the west, North Maluku to the east, and Malaysia and the Philippines to the north.
Buginese or Bugis is a language spoken by about 4 million people mainly in the southern part of 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.
South Sulawesi is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital and largest city is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi and West Sulawesi to the north, the Gulf of Bone and Southeast Sulawesi to the east, Makassar Strait to the west, and Flores Sea to the south.
The Bugis people, also known as Buginese, are an Austronesian ethnic group—the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi, in the south-western province of Sulawesi, third-largest island of Indonesia. The Bugis in 1605 converted to Islam from Animism. Although the majority of Bugis are Muslim, a small minority adhere to Christianity as well as a pre-Islamic indigenous belief called Tolotang.
In addition to its classical and modern literary form, Malay had various regional dialects established after the rise of the Srivijaya empire in Sumatra, Indonesia. Also, Malay spread through interethnic contact and trade across the south East Asia Archipelago as far as the Philippines. That contact resulted in a lingua franca that was called Bazaar Malay or low Malay and in Malay Melayu Pasar. It is generally believed that Bazaar Malay was a pidgin, influenced by contact among Malay, Hokkien, Portuguese, and Dutch traders.
Manado Malay, or simply the Manado language, is a creole language spoken in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province in Indonesia, and the surrounding area. The local name of the language is bahasa Manado, and the name Minahasa Malay is also used, after the main ethnic group speaking the language. Since Manado Malay is used primarily for spoken communication, there is no standard orthography.
Palu, officially known as the City of Palu, is the capital and largest city of Central Sulawesi Province in Indonesia. Palu is located on the northwestern coast of Sulawesi and borders Donggala Regency to the north and west, Parigi Moutong Regency to the east, and Sigi Regency to the south. The city boundaries encompass a land area of 395.06 km2 (152.53 sq mi). According to the 2020 Indonesian census, Palu had a population of 373,218, making it the third-most populous city on the island after Makassar and Manado; the official estimate as at mid 2023 was 387,493 - comprising 194,340 males and 193,150 females. Palu is the center of finance, government, and education in Central Sulawesi, as well as one of several major cities on the island. The city hosts the province's main port, its biggest airport, and most of its public universities.
Indonesia is home to over 700 living languages spoken across its extensive archipelago. This significant linguistic variety constitutes approximately 10% of the world’s total languages, positioning Indonesia as the second most linguistically diverse nation globally, following Papua New Guinea. The majority of these languages belong to the Austronesian language family, prevalent in the western and central regions of Indonesia, including languages such as Acehnese, Sundanese, and Buginese. In contrast, the eastern regions, particularly Papua and the Maluku Islands, are home to over 270 Papuan languages, which are distinct from the Austronesian family and represent a unique linguistic heritage. The language most widely spoken as a native language is Javanese, primarily by the Javanese people in the central and eastern parts of Java Island, as well as across many other islands due to migration.
The Lontara script, also known as the Bugis script, Bugis-Makassar script, or Urupu Sulapa’ Eppa’ "four-cornered letters", is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed in the South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi region. The script is primarily used to write the Buginese language, followed by Makassarese and Mandar. Closely related variants of Lontara are also used to write several languages outside of Sulawesi such as Bima, Ende, and Sumbawa. The script was actively used by several South Sulawesi societies for day-to-day and literary texts from at least mid-15th Century CE until the mid-20th Century CE, before its function was gradually supplanted by the Latin alphabet. Today the script is taught in South Sulawesi Province as part of the local curriculum, but with very limited usage in everyday life.
Mandar is an Austronesian language spoken by the Mandar ethnic group living in West Sulawesi province of Indonesia, especially in the coastal regencies of Majene and Polewali Mandar, as well as in a few settlements in the islands of Pangkep District and Ujung Lero, a small peninsula near Pare-Pare).
On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, 114 native languages are spoken, all of which belong to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. With a total number of 17,200,000 inhabitants, Sulawesi displays a high linguistic diversity when compared with the most densely populated Indonesian island Java, which hosts 4–8 languages spoken by 145,100,000 inhabitants.
Palembang, also known as Palembang Malay, is a Malayic variety of the Musi dialect chain primarily spoken in the city of Palembang and nearby lowlands, and also as a lingua franca throughout South Sumatra. Since parts of the region used to be under direct Javanese rule for quite a long time, Palembang is significantly influenced by Javanese, down to its core vocabularies.
The Mandarese are an ethnic group in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi in Sulawesi. The Mandar language belongs to the Northern subgroup of the South Sulawesi languages group of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. The closest language to Mandar is the Toraja-Sa'dan language.
Moma is an Austronesian language spoken in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Historically, it is derived from the Kaili dialect cluster, but is divergent due to strong influence from Uma.
The native Makassar, Macassar, Makassarese, Makassan or Macassan(in Australian English) are one of the indigenous Sulawesi people, native to the southern Celebic peninsular regions in Indonesia. The Makassar people are rich in culture and they are acknowledged for their traditional culinary and maritime knowledges, together with the Bugis, its closest related ethnic group. The Phinisi, a worldwide well-known boatbuilding of Southern Sulawesi-origin, a joint invention of Bugis-Makassar people, is internationally inscribed as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They natively speak various Makassaric languages in respective native areas, and its standardized variation known as the Standard Makassar.
Islam in Central Sulawesi, a province of Indonesia, is the majority religion embraced by around 75% of the province's 2,683,722 inhabitants . The propagators of Islam were thought to enter Central Sulawesi through neighboring regions, namely Bone, Wajo, and Mandar from the south and west routes, and through Gorontalo and Ternate from the north and east routes via Tomini Bay and Tolo Bay.
The Makasar script, also known as Ukiri' Jangang-jangang or Old Makasar script, is a historical Indonesian writing system that was used in South Sulawesi to write the Makassarese language between the 17th and 19th centuries until it was supplanted by the Lontara Bugis script.
The Orang Pulo language, alternatively known as Melayu Campuran or Melayu Kepulauan Seribu, is a Malay-based creole spoken by the Orang Pulo 'people of island' inhabiting the Thousand Islands off the coast of Jakarta, Indonesia. This language emerged from a mixture of many languages in Indonesia, particularly Bugis and Malay.
