Balantak is an
Austronesian language spoken at the head of the eastern peninsula of
Sulawesi. It is classified as a member of the
Saluan-Banggai branch of the
Celebic subgroup. The Balantak language is the primary language of the Balantak people. Although 90% of the population are also proficient in
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 vernacular is still vigorously used in everyday contexts, and most children only speak Balantak before entering school.
Phonology
Balantak has the following phoneme inventory:
Sequences of like vowels are phonetically realized as long vowels, e.g. ''toop''
ɔ:p'cigarette', ''nuur''
u:r'coconut'.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
"Balantak" at ''
World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-RO ...
''
Saluan–Banggai languages
Languages of Sulawesi
{{celebic-lang-stub