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.^[2] It is written using the Latin and Hangul scripts.

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.^{[3][unreliable source?]}

Cia-Cia has been privately taught to schoolchildren in the Hangul script since 2008. The students are also taught some basic Korean.^[4] The program remained active as of 2023.^[5]

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.^[6]

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]

The language situation on the island of Buton is very complicated and not known in great detail.^[7]

Dialects include Kaesabu, Sampolawa (Mambulu-Laporo), Wabula (with its subvarieties), and Masiri.^[8] 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.^{[9][page needed]}

Phonology according to Reve van den Berg (1991).^[2]

Notes:

• /k/ is realized as a palatal affricate /c/ before high vowels /i/ and /u/
• /r/ is either an alveolar trill /r/, or a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ or uvular trill /ʁ/, depending on the dialect

Cia-cia has a common five-vowel system.^[2][10]

/e, o/ may also be heard as open-mid [ɛ, ɔ].^[2]

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]}

In 2009, residents of the city of Baubau set about adopting Hangul, the script for the Korean language, to write Cia-Cia.^[11]

The mayor consulted the Indonesian government on the possibility of making the writing system official.^[12] However, the project encountered difficulties between the city of Baubau, the Hunminjeongeum Society, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2011.^[13] 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;^[14] it reopened them in 2022.^[15] In December 2023, Agence France-Presse again published an article with interviews showcasing the Hangul effort.^[5]

As of 2017, Hangul remains in use in schools and on local signs.^[16]

In January 2020, the publication of the first Cia-Cia dictionary in Hangul was announced.^[15][17][18] It was published in December 2021.^[19]

Cia-Cia, like Muna, has three sets of numerals: a free form, a prefixed form, and a reduplicated form.^[2] The prefixed form is used before units of 10 (pulu), 100 (hacu), and 1,000 (riwu), and before classifiers and measure nouns. The reduplicated form is used after units of ten when counting. ompulu is an irregular exception.^[2]

An example of the Hangul script, followed by the Latin alphabet and IPA:^[23][24]

Reve van den Berg (1991) provides a few more examples.^[2]

• Mustafa Abdullah. 1985. Struktur bahasa Cia-Cia. Proyek Penelitian Bahasa dan Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah Sulawesi Selatan, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
• Cho, Tae-Young (26 November 2012). "Cia-Cia Language: From The Era of Oral to the Era of Writing" (PDF). Humaniora. 24 (3): 324–332. doi:10.22146/jh.1374. ISSN 2302-9269.

Cia-Cia language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Cia-cia: Sampolawa language on Globalrecordings.net
• (in Korean) Interview on the Cia-Cia's adaption of Hangeul

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