Location

Andio is spoken in two coastal villages, Tangeban and Tauge', on the head of the eastern peninsula of Sulawesi. For the location of Tangeban and the Andio language area, see the sketch map in Busenitz (1991:14).

Classification

Andio was first recognized as a distinct language in a 1970s survey of the languages of Central Sulawesi (Barr and Barr 1979:36).  Initial reports suggested that Bobongko of the Togian Islands and Andio were one and the same language (see e.g. Sneddon 1983), but this error was subsequently revealed and corrected (Noorduyn 1991:103). 

From the viewpoint of lexicostatistics, Andio shares its closest relationships with Saluan (62% lexically similar in basic vocabulary) and Balantak (66% lexically similar). From the perspective of historical-comparative linguistics, Andio appears to be a Saluanic language that has been heavily influenced by Balantak (Mead 2003).

Population

In a survey conducted in 1988, it was estimated there were around 1,700 speakers of Andio (Busenitz 1991:1).

References

Barr, Donald F.; and Sharon G. Barr. 1979. Languages of Central Sulawesi: Checklist, preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. In cooperation with C. Salombe. Ujung Pandang: UNHAS-SIL.

Busenitz, Robert L. 1991. Lexicostatistic and sociolinguistic survey of Balantak and Andio. UNHAS-SIL more Sulawesi sociolinguistic surveys, 1987–1991 (Workpapers in Indonesian Languages and Cultures, 11), edited by Timothy Friberg, 1–17. Ujung Pandang: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Mead, David. 2003. The Saluan-Banggai microgroup of eastern Sulawesi. Issues in Austronesian historical phonology (Pacific Linguistics, 550), edited by John Lynch, 65–86. Canberra: Australian National University.

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. [Online version available. URL:
http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas.]

Noorduyn, J. 1991. A critical survey of studies on the languages of Sulawesi. (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Bibliographic Series 18.) Leiden: KITLV Press.

Sneddon, J. N. (compiler.) 1983. Northern Celebes (Sulawesi). Language atlas of the Pacific area, part 2: Japan area, Taiwan (Formosa), Philippines, mainland and insular South-east Asia (Pacific Linguistics, C‑67), edited by Stephen A. Wurm and Shirô Hattori, map 43. Canberra: Australian National University, Australian Academy of the Humanities and The Japan Academy.