Location
The Pancana language area stretches like a belt from coast to coast across the central part of Buton Island. The general limits of the Pancana language area were established by Anceaux (1978) and Bhurhanuddin (1979), although in a subsequent report Van den Berg (1991) removed the Kambowa dialect from Pancana and grouped it instead with Kioko.
Dialects
Following Bhurhanuddin (1979:20–21) the three other dialects of Pancana are: Kalande and Labuandiri in the eastern part of the Pancana language area, and Kapontori in the western part. It should be noted, however, that these ‘dialect names’ are simply three villages where Bhurhanuddin happened to collect word lists, and there may in fact be more variation (dialect chaining) in the Pancana area than has yet been revealed by any study.
Population
Bhurhanuddin (1979:51) reported 15,000 speakers of Pancana, but based on more recent data Andersen (2006:7) revised this figure downward to 6,000.
References
Anceaux, J. C. 1978. The linguistic position of South-east Sulawesi: A preliminary outline. Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings, fascicle 1: Western Austronesian (Pacific Linguistics, C-61), edited by S. A. Würm and Lois Carrington, 275–283. Canberra: Australian National University.
Andersen, T. David. 2006. Suku bahasa di Sulawesi Tenggara. Unpublished typescript, 11 pp.
Berg, René van den. 1991. Muna dialects and Munic languages: Towards a reconstruction. VICAL 2: Western Austronesian and contact languages: papers from the Fifth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, edited by Ray Harlow, 21–51. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand.
Bhurhanuddin, B. H. 1979. Bahasa-bahasa daerah di Sulawesi Tenggara. Unpublished typescript, 60 pp. ages: papers from the Fifth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, edited by Ray Harlow, 21–51. Auckland: Linguistic Society of New Zealand.
