The phonological system of Bahasa Toraja

Hyosung Hwang (Seoul National University)

Ho-Young Lee (Seoul National University)
Tai Hyun Chun (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

1. Introduction

According to the SIL International which offers the most authoritative information on the world’s
languages, currently 7,359 languages exist on earth. British linguist Andrew Dalby claimed in his book
<Language in Danger> that languages of the world disappear at the rate of one for every two weeks. He
also predicted that the half of the world’s languages would become extinct within this century, and that
only about 200 languages would survive on earth within two centuries.
A tribe without a writing system cannot record their history and culture. Moreover, as the education of
their mother tongue at school is impossible, the language is very likely to be extinct. The extinction of a
language indicates not only the loss of the diversity of human culture but also the extinction of an
important human heritage. To preserve endangered languages and to maintain the diversity of human
culture, we need to make great efforts to establish writing systems and produce textbooks for the native
speakers of those languages, so that they could teach their indigenous languages in elementary schools.
In this paper, we report a preliminary study about the sound system of the Toraja language spoken in
South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

2. Consonant system

The consonant system of Toraja is shown in <Table 1>. Bahasa Toraja is a unique language in that it
has /s/ as the only fricative. According to the UPSID (UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database),
which gives a statistical report on the phoneme inventories of 451 languages in the world, only 22
languages (4.88%) have only one fricative in their phoneme inventories. This is less than the percentage
of the languages that do not have a fricative sound at all (32 languages, 6.87%). It is also noticeable that
/h/ does not exist in this language, as /h/ is one of the most popular fricatives in the world’s languages
(61.86% in UPSID).
The Toraja language has voiceless unaspirated plosives /p, t, k/ and their voiced counterparts /b, d, g/.
All the voiced plosives are pre-voiced. /d/ tends to be realized as a slightly retroflexed sound.

Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Labial-Velar Glottal

Plosive p b t d k g ʔ
Fricative s
Affricate ʥ
Flap / Trill r
Lateral
Approximant
l
Nasal m n ŋ
Approximant j w
<Table 1> The consonant system of Bahasa Toraja
 Glottal stop occurs either in word-medial or word-final positions, and it accompanies creaky voice in
the word-final position. The phonemic status of this sound is clear, giving a minimal pair such as /baʔ ba/
‘door’ and /baba/ ‘the ends’. Alveolar trill /r/ is usually realized as a trill sound, but it is sometimes
realized as flap /ɾ / or weakened to velar fricative /ɣ /. The functional load of the approximants /j, w/ is
very low in this language. And voiceless alveolar affricate /ʥ / seems to occur only in Indonesian loan
words.

pitu seven naraŋ horse

baraʔ strong wind mararaŋ Red

talu three saŋa name
duku meat ʥ uta million
kappalaʔ ship kaju tree
gamara sound kamawataŋan power
baʔ ba door rara blood
sadaŋ mouth lila tongue
<Table 2> Consonants in Bahasa Toraja

Another interesting aspect of this language is that it exhibits a wide range of geminate consonants
between vowels. These geminate consonants are produced by holding the tongue or lips in the position of
the consonant for a longer period of time than for the corresponding simple consonants. /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, r,
l/ show gemination, while /b, d, g, s, ʥ / do not.

phoneme word

/p/ kappalaʔ ‘ship’

/t/ attu ‘time’

/m/ sammin ‘mirror’

/n/ annan ‘six’

/ŋ/ laŋŋan ‘ride’

/r/ barraʔ ‘rice’

/l/ illoŋ ‘nose’

<Table 3> Geminate consonants in Bahasa Toraja

3. Vowel system

Like other Austronesian languages, Bahasa Toraja has five vowels ― /a, e, i, o, u/. Since /e/ and /o/ are
pronounced as close-mid vowels, sometimes non-native speakers might confuse these vowels with
corresponding close vowels /i/ and /u/. Long vowels occur in words such as /u:lu/ ‘head’ and /bula:n/
‘gold’, but more thorough investigation is needed to verify whether long vowels occur systematically in
this language.

asu dog
bula:n gold
den certain
iko you
do above
unnali to buy
u:lu head
<Table 4> Vowels in Bahasa Toraja

Schwa often occurs as an allophone of /a/ in an unstressed syllable, especially when a word has two or
more syllables and ends with /n/ (e.g. alian [aliən] ‘price’, kadellekan [kadellekən] ‘East’, kamawataŋan
[kamawataŋən] ‘power’)

4. Stress

Stress generally falls on the penultimate syllable of a word, but the stress moves on to a long vowel
when it occurs.

'lalan road to'temo today

me'lambiʔ morning karu'ttasaʔ paper

kamawa'taŋan power bu'la:n gold
<Table 5> Stress pattern in Bahasa Toraja

5. Conclusion

This paper has described the overall sound system of the Toraja language. It has several unique and
interesting aspects including the rarity of the fricative, the gemination of consonants, and the existence of
glottal stop and long vowels. Further studies are needed with more materials and speakers, which is
necessary for the instrumental phonetic documentation of Bahasa Toraja.