The Tomini–Tolitoli languages are a disputed subgroup in the Austronesian language family spoken off the

Gulf of Tomini The Gulf of Tomini ( id, Teluk Tomini), also known as the Bay of Tomini, is the equatorial gulf which separates the Minahassa Peninsula, Minahassa (Northern) and East Peninsula, Sulawesi, East Peninsulas of the island of Sulawesi (Celebes) in In ...

and the district of Tolitoli in northern

Central Sulawesi Central Sulawesi (Indonesian: ''Sulawesi Tengah'') 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 2010 census recorded a population of 2,635,009 for ...

province,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, consisting of two branches, viz. "Tomini" and "Tolitoli". The unity of this group has not yet been demonstrated, and it may well be that the two branches actually are not closer to each other than to other languages of Sulawesi.

Languages

The following tentative classification of the Tomini–Tolitoli languages is from Himmelmann (2001:20). *Tolitoli ** Totoli **

Boano Boano Island is an island in West Seram Regency, Maluku Province, Indonesia. It is located off the northern coast of the Hoamoal Peninsula at the western end of Seram Island, across the Boano Strait. The inhabitants speak the Boano language, ...

*Tomini **Northern Tomini *** Ampibabo *** Lauje *** Tialo ( Tomini) *** Dondo **Southern Tomini ***

Balaesang Balaesang is a district of Donggala Regency, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, ...

*** Pendau *** Dampelas *** Taje (Petapa) *** Tajio Totoli and Boano are closely related to each other but diverge very much from the other languages in terms of lexicon, phonology, and other areas. These two languages may have been influenced by the Gorontalic languages and also more recently by

South Sulawesi languages The South Sulawesi languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian language family. They are primarily spoken in the Indonesian provinces of South Sulawesi and West Sulawesi, with a small outlying pocket in West Kalimantan. Subgrouping Internal ...

such as

Bugis The Bugis people (pronounced ), also known as Buginese, are an ethnicity—the most numerous of the three major linguistic and ethnic groups of South Sulawesi (the others being Makassar and Toraja), in the south-western province of Sulawe ...

and

Makassar Makassar (, mak, ᨆᨀᨔᨑ, Mangkasara’, ) is the capital of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth-largest urban center after Jakarta, Surabaya, Med ...

(Himmelmann 2001:20). Mead (2003) notes that certain aspects of the phonological history of Totoli and Boano even point against an inclusion of these two languages in the Celebic subgroup.

Demographics

The demographics below are from Himmelmann (2001:18). ;West Coast *

: 3,200 * Pendau (Ndau): 3,200 * Dampelas (Dampal): 10,300 * Dondo: 13,000 * Totoli (Tolitoli): 25,000 ;East Coast * Taje (Petapa): 350 * Ampibabo- Lauje: 6,000 * Tajio (Kasimbar): 12,000 * Lauje(Tinombo): 38,000 * Tialo (Tomini): 30,000 *

(Bolano): 2,700 ;Total: 145,000

Footnotes

References

*Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2001. ''Sourcebook on Tomini-Tolitoli languages: General information and word lists''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University.

External links

"Tomini-Tolitoli"
at ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' (23rd ed, 2020). {{DEFAULTSORT:Tomini-Tolitoli languages Celebic languages