Location and Dialects
Bolango is spoken in three separate locations, the result of migration over two hundred years ago (Wahidji 1977, cited in Sneddon and Usup 1986:410). The Atinggola dialect of Bolango is spoken on the northern coast (Celebes Sea) in the northeastern corner of Gorontalo Province and in a few villages across the border in North Sulawesi Province. Atinggola was formerly one of five polities in the Gorontaloese confederation known as the Limo lo Pahalaa (Riedel 1870; Haga 1931).
Bolango proper is spoken on the southern coast (Gulf of Tomini) in and around the town of Molibagu in an otherwise Mongondow-speaking area. Molibagu is some hundred kilometers eastward and southward of Atinggola.
Almost directly north of Molibagu and east of Atinggola, Bolango is also spoken in the village of Sauk (Merrifield and Salea 1996:10, 251), on the edge of a modest bay opening to the Celebes Sea. In the Dutch colonial era this bay was known as Bolaang Uki. Bolaang Uki also served as the name of a former small kingdom on Sulawesi’s north coast (Van Doren 1860; Graafland 1898:2; inter alia), and in the past has also been used as an alternate name for the Bolango language (Adriani and Kruyt 1914:206 ff.; Sneddon and Usup 1986:410).
For a rough indication of the three locations where Bolango is spoken, see the sketch map in Lobel (2011:544).
Although Bolango and Atinggola are closely related—Merrifield and Salea (1996:10) calculated ninety-three percent lexically similar in basic vocabulary—because of its separate location Atinggola has sometimes been treated as a distinct language.
Population
Sneddon and Usup (1986:410) estimated 23,000 speakers of Bolango (by dialect Atinggola: 16,000, Bolango: 7,000). Andersen (2004) calculated a somewhat lower estimate of 18,500 based on demographic information collected by Merrifield and Salea circa 1990.
References
Adriani, N.; and Alb. C. Kruyt. 1914. De Bare’e-sprekende Toradja’s van Midden Celebes, vol. 3: Taal- en letterkundige schets der Bare’e-taal en overzicht van het taalgebied Celebes–Zuid-Halmahera. Batavia: Landsdrukkerij.
[Andersen, T. David.] [2004.] Population of languages groups of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Typescript, 18 pp.
Doren, J. B. J. van. 1860. “De rijkjes Bolang-Mogondo, Bolang-Banka, Bintawoena, Bolang-Itam, Kaidipan, Andagile en Bwool, aan de Noord-kust van Celebes gelegen.” Chapter 2 in Bijdragen tot de kennis van verschillende overzeesche landen, volken, enz., vol. 1. Amsterdam: J. D. Sybrandi.
Graafland, N. 1898. De Minahassa: Haar verleden en haar tegenwoordige toestand, 2nd edition. Batavia: G. Kolff. [First published 1867, Rotterdam: Rij M. Wijt & Zonen.]
Haga, B. J. 1931. De Lima-pahalaa (Gorontalo): Volksordening, adatrecht en bestuurspolitiek. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 71:186–314. [translated into Indonesian and published 1981 under the title Lima Pahalaa: Susunan masyarakat, hukum adat, dan kebijaksanaan pemerintahan di Gorontalo. Jakarta: Djambatan.]
Merrifield, Scott; and Martinus Salea. 1996. North Sulawesi language survey. (Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Sociolinguistics, 1.) Dallas: SIL.
Riedel, J. G. F. 1870. De landschappen Holontalo, Limoeto, Bone, Boalemo en Kattinggola, of Andagile: Geographische, statistische, historische en ethnographische aanteekeningen. Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 19:46–153.
Sneddon, J. N.; and Hunggu Tadjuddin Usup. 1986. Shared sound changes in the Gorontalic language group: Implications for subgrouping. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 142:407–426.
Wahidji, Habu. 1977. Dialek Atinggola. Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa.
