Cia-Cia (''Bahasa Ciacia'', ''바하사 찌아찌아'', ''بهاس چيا-چيا''), also known as Buton or Butonese, is an Austronesian language spoken principally around the city of

Baubau Baubau is a city in Southeast Sulawesi province, Indonesia. The city is located on the southwest coast of Buton island. Baubau attained city status on 21 June 2001, based on Indonesian Law Number 13, for the year 2001. It covers an area of 294.9 ...

on the southern tip of

Buton Island Buton (also Butung, Boeton or Button) is an island in Indonesia located off the southeast peninsula of Sulawesi. It covers roughly 4,727 square kilometers in area, or about the size of Madura; it is the 129th largest island in the world and I ...

off the southeast coast of

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...

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, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...

, the Korean alphabet, and the mayor consulted the Indonesian government on the possibility of making the writing system official.Lee Tae-hoon
"Hangeul didn’t become Cia Cia’s official writing"
''Korea Times'', 2010-10-06. However, the project encountered difficulties between the city of Baubau, the

Hunminjeongeum Society The Hunminjeongeum Society, sometimes called the "Hunminjeongeum Research Institute" in English-language newspaper accounts, is a private organization in Seoul dedicated to the propagation of Hangul to all the unwritten languages of the world.

, and the

Seoul Metropolitan Government The Seoul Metropolitan Government is a local government of Seoul, South Korea. The mayor is elected to a four-year term by the citizens of Seoul and is responsible for the administration of the city government. The Seoul Metropolitan Government d ...

in 2011. The

King Sejong Institute King Sejong Institute () is the brand name of Korean-language institutes established by the South Korean government around the world since 2007. The institute's name refers to Sejong the Great, the inventor of the Korean alphabet. As of June 20 ...

which had been established in Baubau in 2011 to teach Hangul to locals, abandoned its offices after a year of operation in 2012. As of 2017 it remains in use in schools and on local signs. In 2020, the first Cia-Cia dictionary was announced. Written in Hangul, it is set to be published in 2023.

Demographics

As of 2005 there were 80,000 speakers. Speakers also use

Wolio Wolio is an Austronesian language spoken in and around Baubau on Buton Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. It belongs to the Wotu–Wolio branch of the Celebic subgroup. Also known as Buton, it is a trade language and the former court lang ...

, which is closely related to Cia-Cia, as well as

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** 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 The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

Geographic distribution

Cia-Cia is spoken in

Southeast Sulawesi Southeast Sulawesi ( id, Sulawesi Tenggara) is a province on the island of Sulawesi, forming the southeastern peninsula of that island, together with a number of substantial offshore islands such as Buton, Muna, Kabaena and Wawonii (formerly ...

, south

, Binongko Island, and

Batu Atas Island Batu may refer to: Geography *Batu, East Java, a city in Indonesia * Batu Islands, an archipelago of Indonesia * Batu, Iran, a village in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran *Batu, Kuala Lumpur, an area in Malaysia *Batu (town), Ethiopia *Batu Lintang ...

. 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 (Mambulu-Laporo), Wabula (with its subvarieties), and Masiri. The Masiri dialect shows the greatest amount of vocabulary in common with the standard dialect. The dialect Pedalaman has ''gh''—equivalent to ''r'' in other dialects—in native vocabulary, but has ''r'' in

loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

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 set about adopting

, the script for the

Korean language Korean ( South Korean: , ''hangugeo''; North Korean: , ''chosŏnmal'') is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographic ...

, as their script for writing Cia-Cia. In January 2020, the publication of the first Cia-Cia dictionary in Hangul was announced. Set to take three years to publish, it is expected to cost . * ᄙ is not a separate letter. The medial /r/ and /l/ are distinguished by writing a single letter (ㄹ) for /r/ and double (ᄙ) 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 (ㅡ) is added. Null consonant and vowel letters (으) are added for initial /l/. An example of the Hangul script followed by Latin alphabet and IPA:

Words

The numerals 1–10 are: :

References

Citations

Sources

* van den Berg, René. 1991. "Preliminary notes on the Cia-Cia language (South Buton)." In Harry A. Poeze and Pim Schoorl (eds.), Excursies in Celebes: Een bundel bijdragen bij het afscheid van J. Noorduyn als directeur-secretaris van het KITLV, 305-24. Leiden: KITLV. * Mustafa Abdullah. 1985. ''Struktur bahasa Cia-Cia.'' Proyek Penelitian Bahasa dan Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. * Ho-Young Lee, Hyosung Hwang, Abidin. 2009. ''Bahasa Cia-Cia 1.'' Hunmin jeongeum Society of Korea. *Cho Tae-Young. 2012. ''Cia-Cia Language: From The Era of Oral To The Era of Writing.'' Humaniora No.3 Vol 24. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/11941-ID-cia-cia-language-from-the-era-of-oral-to-the-era-of-writing.pdf

External links

Cia-cia: Sampolawa language on Globalrecordings.net
*
Interview on the Cia-Cia's adaption of Hangeul
{{Languages of Indonesia Muna–Buton languages Languages of Sulawesi Hangul