Tonsawang language

Tonsawang, also known as Tombatu,^[2] is an Austronesian language of the northern tip of Sulawesi, Indonesia. It belongs to the Minahasan branch of the Philippine languages.^[3][4][5]

Tonsawang
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Northern Sulawesi
Native speakers	(20,000 cited 1981)^[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Philippine Minahasan Tonsawang
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tnw
Glottolog	tons1239
ELP	Tonsawang

Location

According to linguist James Sneddon, the language is "one of the most isolated languages", spoken in southeast Minahasa,^[6] while linguist Robert Blust situated it, along with the others of the Minahasan group, near Lake Tondano, "in the northern peninsula of Sulawesi".^[7]

Orthography

Alphabet

• a – [ä]
• b – [b]
• e – [ə]
• è – [ɛ]
• g – [g]
• i – [i]
• j – [d͡ʒ]
• k – [k]
• l – [l]
• m – [m]
• n – [n]
• ng – [ŋ]
• o – [o̞]
• p – [p]
• r – [ɾ]
• s – [s]
• t – [t]
• u – [u]
• w – [w]
• ' – [ʔ]^[8][9]

References

1. Tonsawang at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Sneddon, J. N. (1970). "The Languages of Minahasa, North Celebes". Oceanic Linguistics. 9 (1): 11–36. doi:10.2307/3622930. JSTOR 3622930.
3. "8 Genetic Classification of the World's Languages". A Guide to the World's Languages. 1987. pp. 275–380. doi:10.1515/9781503621336-015. ISBN 9781503621336. S2CID 244724303.
4. Sneddon, J. N. (1993). "The Drift Towards Final Open Syllables in Sulawesi Languages". Oceanic Linguistics. 32 (1): 1–44. doi:10.2307/3623095. JSTOR 3623095.
5. Adelaar, K. Alexander & Himmelmann, Nikolaus (2005). The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Routledge.
6. Sneddon, J. N. (1970). "The Languages of Minahasa, North Celebes". Oceanic Linguistics. 9 (1): 11–36. doi:10.2307/3622930. JSTOR 3622930.
7. Blust, Robert (1991). "The Greater Central Philippines Hypothesis". Oceanic Linguistics. 30 (2): 73–129. doi:10.2307/3623084. JSTOR 3623084.
8. "Tonsawang language, alphabet, and pronunciation". Omniglot. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
9. Sneddon, James N. Proto-Minahasan: phonology, morphology, and wordlist. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1978. pp. 5, 54-57.

Further reading

• Brickell, Timothy C. (2018). "Tonsawang (Toundanow), North Sulawesi, Indonesia — Language Contexts". In: Peter K. Austin (ed.). Language Documentation and Description, vol 16. London: EL Publishing. pp. 55-85. ISSN 1740-6234.
• Brickell, Timothy C. (2020). "Language contact in North Sulawesi: Preliminary observations". In: Thomas J. Conners and Atsuko Utsumi, eds. Aspects of regional varieties of Malay. NUSA 68: 159–190. Permanent URL: http://repository.tufs.ac.jp/handle/94893; doi: https://doi.org/10.15026/94893
• Matu, Tania. "Bentuk Permintaan Sopan dalam Bahasa Inggris dan Bahasa Tonsawang: Suatu Analisis Kontrastif". In: Jurnal Elektronik Fakultas Sastra Universitas Sam Ratulangi Vol 1, No 3 (2018). (Abstract in English).
• Rorong, Ferdy Dj; Lensun, Sherly; Sompotan, Amelia Gladys; Pandi, Helena; Sambeka; Fince Leny; Aror, Susanti. "Tonsawang Language Speech Acts in Traditional Medicine". In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social Sciences (ICSS 2018). Atlantis Press, 2018. pp. 903-907. ISBN 978-94-6252-588-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/icss-18.2018.187.
• Utsumi, Atsuko (2018). The Tonsawang language’s basic morphology and syntactic features. Paper presented at The Fourteenth International Conference of Austronesian Linguistics (14-ICAL). July 17-20. Antananarivo: Universitè di Antananarivo.

External links

• ELAR collection: Tonsawang: a collaborative multimedia project documenting an endangered language of North Sulawesi deposited by Timothy Brickell