Sulawesi Language Alliance

Championing Local Languages in the Heart of Indonesia

Language Group

Overview
ISO 639-3: 
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Alternate Names: 
Belala, Mbelala, "Baria"
Population: 
1100 (1988)
Microgroup: 
Province: 
Central Sulawesi
Overall Vitality: 
4/Vulnerable

Location

Tombelala is spoken in villages immediately to the north of the town of Bungku on the eastern coast of Sulawesi. For the location of Tombelala, see among others Adriani's Schetstaalkaart van Celebes (included in Adriani and Kruyt 1914) and the sketch map in Mead and Mead (1991:136).

Classification

Adriani and Kruyt (1914:13) classified Tombelala as a dialect of Pamona. In a later study, Mead and Mead (1991:128) concluded Tombelala was sufficiently divergent in terms of word stock to be considered a separate language.

Coincidentally Sedoa and Tombelala both use baria as their word for ‘no,’ but Adriani rejected the notion that these languages are closely related (Adriani and Kruyt 1914:14).

Population

In a survey conducted in 1989, it was estimated there were around 1,100 speakers of Tombelala (Mead and Mead 1991:136).

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.

Mead, David; and Melanie Mead. 1991. Survey of the Pamona dialects of Kecamatan Bungku Tengah. UNHAS-SIL: More Sulawesi sociolinguistic surveys, 1987–1991 (Workpapers in Indonesian Languages and Cultures, 11), edited by Timothy Friberg, 121–142. Ujung Pandang: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Vitality

Summary

 

Discussion

We have no independent information on the vitality of the Tombelala language. The present rating follows UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010), even though it appears that the 4/Vulnerable rating there was based primarily on the reported number of speakers, rather than on information obtained in the field.

What Others Have Written

Wurm (2007:544)

No literacy in it. In 1995, 1,100 speakers were reported. Indonesian is much used as a second language and puts pressure on it, and the Tombelala consider themselves as Pamona who speak the large Pamona language, though Tombelala has only 66–76 per cent lexical similarity to the various Pamona dialects. The language is potentially endangered.

References

Moseley, Christopher (ed.) 2010. Atlas of the world’s languages in danger, 3rd ed., entirely revised, enlarged and updated. (Memory of Peoples Series.) Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Wurm, Stephen A. 2007. Australasia and the Pacific. Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages, edited by Christopher Moseley, 425–577. New York: Routledge.

Documentation

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