Tukang Besi language

Tukang Besi
Native to Indonesia
Region Sulawesi, Tukang Besi Archipelago
Native speakers
 250,000 (1995)[1]
Austronesian
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
khc – Tukang Besi North
bhq – Tukang Besi South
Glottolog tuka1247[2]

Tukang Besi is an Austronesian language spoken in the Tukangbesi Islands in southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia by a quarter million speakers.

Phonology

The vowel phonemes of Tukang Besi

The northern dialect of Tukang Besi has 25 consonant phonemes and a basic 5-vowel system.[3] It features stress which is usually on the second-to-last syllable. The language has two implosive consonants, which are uncommon in the world's languages. The coronal plosives and /s/ have prenasalized counterparts which act as separate phonemes.

Bilabial Dental/
Alveolar		 Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive plain p b t̪ (d̪) k ɡ ʔ
prenasalized mp mb n̪t̪ n̪d̪ ŋk ŋɡ
Implosive ɓ ɗ̪
Fricative plain β s (z) h
prenasalized n̪s̪
Trill r
Lateral l̪

/b/ only appears in loanwords, but it contrasts with /ɓ/. [d] and [z] are not phonemic and appear only as allophones of /dʒ/ which appears only in loanwords.

References

  1. ↑ Tukang Besi North at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Tukang Besi South at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Tukang Besi". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Donohue, Mark (1999). "Tukang Besi". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–53. ISBN 0-521-65236-7.
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