Location
Buol is the name of a language, a people group, and a former principality located along the Celebes Sea in what is now northern Central Sulawesi Province. On its east Buol is bordered by the Gorontalo language area and on tis west by Totoli.
Classification
Buol is closely related to Gorontalo, a language with which it shares several sound changes (Sneddon and Usup 1986). Although genetically Totoli and Buol are only distantly related within the Austronesian language family, over centuries of contact they have mutually influenced one another (Zobel 2005:625).
Population
Census data for the year 2000 estimated 91,000 ethnic Buol in Central Sulawesi Province (Suryadinata, Arifin and Ananta 2003:8, 26).
References
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.
Suryadinata, Leo; Evi Nurvidya Arifin, and Aris Ananta. 2003. Indonesia’s population: Ethnicity and religion in a changing political landscape. (Indonesia’s Population Series, 1.) Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Zobel, Erik. 2005. Buol. The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar, edited by Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, 625–648. London: Routledge.
