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Lontara: the four consonant series
The traditional order, read row by row: ka ga nga ngka, pa ba ma mpa, ta da na nra, ca ja nya nca. Each letter carries the vowel a. The fourth column, a nasal fused with a stop, is found in Buginese and not in Makassarese Lontara.
Lontara: the last seven letters
ya ra la wa, then sa, the vowel carrier a, and ha (mainly for Arabic words). Unicode names ᨓ "va", but Bugis read it wa.
Vowel signs
Added to a letter to replace its a: ᨀᨗ ki, ᨀᨘ ku, ᨀᨙ ké, ᨀᨚ ko, ᨀᨛ kə. Type the letter first, then the sign; é is typed after the letter but drawn before it.
Lontara punctuation
Pallawa marks a pause or the end of a sentence in text written without spaces; the second sign closes a section.
Latin alphabet
Buginese in Latin letters follows Indonesian spelling, plus É é for the clear e of Soppéng and madécéng; plain e is the short neutral vowel. F, Q, V, X and Z are mostly for loanwords and names, though q also writes the glottal stop in some spellings (Lontaraq).
Punctuation
The apostrophe writes the glottal stop at the end of words like tabé' and To Ugi'; quotation marks follow Indonesian “like this”.
Where it's spoken
South Sulawesi in Indonesia, and Bugis communities in Malaysia, notably in Sabah, Johor and Selangor.
Bugis in emoji
The pinisi ship, Lontara manuscripts and the lontar palm, Wajo silk weaving, and the mosque of a largely Muslim people.
Sulla mappa
Caricamento…
The Buginese alphabet: Lontara letters
Buginese (Basa Ugi, ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ in its own script) has been written for centuries in Lontara, which Bugis also call urupu sulapa' eppa', 'four-cornered letters'. It is an abugida of the Brahmi family, a cousin of the Javanese and Balinese scripts: every consonant letter already includes the vowel a, so ᨀ is ka and ᨅᨔ spells basa. The name comes from the lontar palm, whose dried leaves were written on before paper.
The 23 letters go in a fixed order of four series and a tail: ᨀ ᨁ ᨂ ᨃ (ka ga nga ngka), ᨄ ᨅ ᨆ ᨇ (pa ba ma mpa), ᨈ ᨉ ᨊ ᨋ (ta da na nra), ᨌ ᨍ ᨎ ᨏ (ca ja nya nca), then ᨐ ᨑ ᨒ ᨓ ᨔ ᨕ ᨖ (ya ra la wa sa a ha). The fourth letter of each series is a nasal fused with a stop, ngka, mpa, nra and nca, a set Buginese uses and Makassarese Lontara does not. ᨕ carries a vowel at the start of a word, as in ᨕᨘᨁᨗ Ugi, and ᨖ appears mainly in words from Arabic.
Lontara vowel signs and what the script leaves out
Five signs change a letter's a to another vowel: ᨀᨗ ki with the sign above, ᨀᨘ ku with the sign below, ᨀᨙ ké with the sign in front, ᨀᨚ ko with the sign after, and ᨀᨛ for the short neutral vowel, written e in Latin spelling. In Unicode you always type the consonant first and then the sign, even for é, which the font then draws on the left.
Lontara has no sign for a consonant without a vowel. Buginese words can end only in a glottal stop or ng, and the script writes neither, nor doubled consonants, nor the n before t in the script's own name: ᨒᨚᨈᨑ reads lo-ta-ra and stands for Lontara. The same letters can therefore spell several words, and readers rely on knowing the language. Traditional texts are mostly written without spaces; the pallawa ᨞ marks a pause, much like a comma or full stop, and ᨟ marks the end of a section.
Buginese in Latin letters: é and the glottal stop
Most Buginese written today, from text messages to place names, uses the Latin alphabet with Indonesian spelling: c is the ch of 'church', ng and ny are single sounds, and j and y are as in Indonesian. The accented é marks the clear e of Soppéng, Sidénréng and madécéng (good), while plain e is the short neutral vowel; many people drop the accent in casual writing.
The glottal stop, the catch in English 'uh-oh', ends many Buginese words and is written with an apostrophe, as in tabé' (excuse me) and To Ugi' (the Bugis people), or with q in some scholarly and older spellings such as Lontaraq. Prices are written in Indonesian rupiah (Rp 25.000) or, in Malaysia, ringgit (RM 25); neither currency has a Unicode symbol of its own.
How to type Buginese Lontara and é
Lontara is in Unicode as the Buginese block, U1A00 to U1A1F, added in version 4.1 in 2005, so the letters can be copied from this page and pasted anywhere a font supports them. Windows can add a Buginese keyboard under Language settings, keyboard apps for Lontara exist for Android, and the free Google font Noto Sans Buginese displays the script on any system; if you see empty boxes, the font is missing, not the text. In HTML a letter can be written by its code, for example ᨀ for ᨀ.
For é on Windows hold Alt and type 0233 on the number pad (É is Alt0201), or with the US-International layout press ' then e. On a Mac press OptionE then e. On phones, hold down e and slide to é. The curly apostrophe ’ is Alt0146 on Windows and OptionShift] on a Mac; the straight ' works just as well.
Where Buginese is spoken
Buginese is the language of the Bugis, the largest people of South Sulawesi in Indonesia , spoken by an estimated 4.5 million people. Its heartland is the old kingdoms of Bone, Wajo, Soppéng and Sidénréng, and seafaring Bugis traders and settlers carried it along the coasts of Kalimantan, Sumatra and the Riau Islands. In Malaysia an estimated 27,000 people still speak it, in Bugis communities in Sabah and on the Peninsula, notably in Johor and Selangor, and Singapore's Bugis district takes its name from Bugis traders.
Buginese is one of the South Sulawesi languages, with Makasar and Mandar as close neighbours; both have also been written in Lontara, and Makassarese has a separate older script of its own as well. Nearly every speaker also uses Indonesian, and older Muslim texts were also written in Arabic letters, called serang when used for Buginese. See the Indonesian, Malay, Javanese and Balinese collections for the letters of the region's other languages.
How to use them
5 situationsFai clic per copiareBuginese Alphabet & Lontara Script combos
10Da sapere
- Lontara cannot write a consonant on its own, so a word ending in ng or a glottal stop looks the same as one ending in a vowel; reading it means already knowing the language.
- The La Galigo, the Bugis creation epic written in Lontara, is among the longest literary works in the world, and its manuscripts were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register in 2011.
- Singapore's Bugis Street and Bugis MRT station are named after the Bugis traders who sailed there in the 19th century.
- Traditional Bugis society recognises five genders: women, men, calalai, calabai and the bissu, androgynous ritual specialists of the old royal courts.
Domande frequenti
8What is the Buginese alphabet called?
Lontara (aksara lontara), also called urupu sulapa' eppa', 'four-cornered letters'. It has 23 letters and 5 vowel signs. Today Buginese is also written in the Latin alphabet with é.
How many letters are in the Lontara Bugis alphabet?
Twenty-three: ka ga nga ngka, pa ba ma mpa, ta da na nra, ca ja nya nca, ya ra la wa, sa a ha. Makassarese Lontara has 19, leaving out ngka, mpa, nra and nca.
What is the difference between Lontara Bugis and Lontara Makassar?
The letters are shared. Buginese adds four nasal-plus-stop letters (ngka, mpa, nra, nca) that Makassarese does not use. Makassarese also had an older script of its own, which Unicode encodes separately as Makasar.
How do you type Lontara script?
Copy the letters from this page, or add a Buginese keyboard: Windows has one in Language settings, and Lontara keyboard apps exist for Android. Type the consonant first, then its vowel sign. Use the font Noto Sans Buginese if letters show as boxes.
Why does Buginese script show as boxes?
Your device has no font for it. Install one such as Noto Sans Buginese; the text itself is standard Unicode (U1A00 to U1A1F) and is not damaged.
How do you write the glottal stop in Bugis?
In Latin letters with an apostrophe, as in tabé' and To Ugi', or with q in some older and scholarly spellings (Lontaraq). Lontara does not write it at all.
How do you type é?
Windows: Alt0233 (É is Alt0201). Mac: OptionE, then e. US-International keyboard: ' then e. On a phone, hold down e and pick é. In HTML: é.
Is Buginese the same as Indonesian?
No. Buginese is a separate language of South Sulawesi with its own vocabulary and script; almost all speakers also speak Indonesian and mix words from it.
