Cia-Cia, also known as Buton or Butonese, is an Austronesian language spoken principally around the city of Baubau on the southern tip of Buton island, off the southeast coast of Sulawesi, in Indonesia.

In 2009, the language gained international media attention as the city of Baubau was teaching children to read and write Cia-Cia in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and the mayor consulted the Indonesian government on the possibility of making the writing system official.^[2] However, the project encountered difficulties between the city of Baubau, the Hunminjeongeum Society, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2011.^[3] The King Sejong Institute, which had been established in Baubau in 2011 to teach Hangul to locals, abandoned its offices after a year of operation, in 2012.^[4] As of 2017, Hangul remains in use in schools and on local signs.^[5] In 2020, the first Cia-Cia dictionary was announced. Written in Hangul, it is set to be published in 2023.^[6]

Demographics

As of 2005, there were 80,000 speakers of Cia-Cia,^[1] many of whom also use Wolio, which is closely related to Cia-Cia, as well as Indonesian. Wolio is falling into disuse as a written language among the Cia-Cia, as it is written using the Arabic script, and Indonesian is now taught in schools using the Latin script.^{[7][unreliable source?]}

Geographic distribution

Cia-Cia is spoken in Southeast Sulawesi, south Buton Island, Binongko Island, and Batu Atas Island.^[1]

According to legend, Cia-Cia speakers on Binonko descend from Butonese troops sent by a Butonese sultan.^[8]

Name

The name of the language comes from the negator cia "no". It is also known as Buton, Butonese, Butung, and in Dutch Boetonees, names it shares with Wolio, and as South Buton or Southern Butung.^[1]

Dialects

The language situation on the island of Buton is very complicated and not known in great detail.^[9]

Dialects include Kaesabu, Sampolawa (Mambulu-Laporo), Wabula (with its subvarieties), and Masiri.^[10] The Masiri dialect shows the greatest amount of vocabulary in common with the standard dialect.^[1] The Pedalaman dialect uses gh—equivalent to r in other dialects—in native vocabulary, and r in loan words.^{[11][page needed]}

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Cia-Cia was once written in a Jawi-like script called Gundhul, based on Arabic, with five additional consonant letters but no signs for vowels.^{[citation needed]}

The Cia-Cia Latin alphabet^[12]

Consonants	g	k	n	d	dh	t	r~gh	l	m	b	v~w	bh	p	s	’	ng	j	c	h
IPA	/ɡ/	/k/	/n/	/ɗ/	/d/	/t/	/r ~ ʁ/	/l/	/m/	/ɓ/	/β/	/b/	/p/	/s/	/ʔ/	/ŋ/	/dʒ/	/tʃ/	/h/
Vowels	a	e	o	u	i
IPA	/a/	/e/	/o/	/u/	/i/

In 2009, residents of the city of Baubau set about adopting Hangul, the script for the Korean language, as their script for writing Cia-Cia.^[13] In January 2020, the publication of the first Cia-Cia dictionary in Hangul was announced. Set to take three years to publish, it is expected to cost ₩15,000,000.^{[14][needs update]}

* ᄙ is not a separate letter. The medial /r/ and /l/ are distinguished by writing a single letter (ㄹ) for /r/ and double (ᄙ) for /l/. Double ㄹ must be written in two syllables. The final /l/ is written with a single letter ㄹ; for the final consonant /r/, the null vowel (ㅡ) is added. Null consonant and vowel letters (으) are added for initial /l/.^{[citation needed]}

An example of the Hangul script, followed by Latin alphabet and IPA:^[15]

Words

Numerals 1–10^{[16][unreliable source?]}

English	one	two	three	four	five	six	seven	eight	nine	ten
Romanization	dise, ise	rua, ghua	tolu	pa'a	lima	no'o	picu	walu, oalu	siua	ompulu
Hangul[original research]	디세, 이세	루아	똘루	빠아	을리마	노오	삐쭈	ᄫᅡᆯ루, 오알루	시우아	옴뿔루