Location

The Mamasa language is spoken in the watershed of the Mamasa River in West Sulawesi Province.

Dialects

Mamasa comprises northern, central and southern dialects (Valkama 1987:124–126). The southern dialect, which some have considered to be a separate language, also goes by the names Pattae' and Binuang. Located on the coast, these people adopted Islam and their royalty intermarried with Bugis, whereas interior (more northern) Mamasa communities remained animistic until converting to Christianity in the first half of the twentieth century. Formerly Binuang was also one of the kingdoms which composed the Pitu Baqbana Binanga (‘seven river mouths’) coastal confederation, and when the new Mamasa Regency was formed in 2002, the Pattae' area was not included in it, but remained part of the Polewali Mandar Regency.

Population

Matti and Matti (1991:3) estimated 100,000 speakers of Mamasa or, broken down by dialect, northern and central areas 65,000 and southern area (Pattae') 35,000. 

References

Matti, David; and Sharon Matti. 1991. Tinjauan sosiolinguisitk bahasa Mamasa. Unpublished typescript, 9 pp.

Valkama, Kari. 1987. Kabupatens Pinrang, Enrekang, Tana Toraja, Luwu and eastern part of Poliwali Mamasa. UNHAS-SIL South Sulawesi sociolinguistic surveys, 1983–1987 (Workpapers in Indonesian Languages and Cultures, 5), edited by Timothy Friberg, 119–136. Ujung Pandang: Summer Institute of Linguistics.