Symbols
93Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
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. Unicode encodes Lontara once, as the Buginese block, and Mandar uses the same letters; the fourth column, a nasal fused with a stop, was shaped around Buginese sounds.
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 it is read wa.
Vowel signs
Added to a letter to replace its a: ᨀᨗ ki, ᨀᨘ ku, ᨀᨙ ke, ᨀᨚ ko. Type the letter first, then the sign; the e sign 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
Mandar in Latin letters follows Indonesian spelling with no accented letters. Q q has a second job: at the end of a syllable it writes the glottal stop, as in sandeq, saqbe and pattuqduq. F, V, X and Z appear mainly in loanwords and names.
Punctuation
The apostrophe is the other common way to write the glottal stop, as in Sayyang Pattu'du and Lipa' Sa'be; quotation marks follow Indonesian “like this”.
Where it's spoken
West Sulawesi in Indonesia: the coast of Polewali Mandar, Majene and Mamuju, and Mandar communities elsewhere in the archipelago.
Mandar in emoji
The sandeq outrigger and the sea it races on, the fish Mandar fishermen bring home, the dancing horse of Sayyang Pattu'du, silk weaving for the lipaq saqbe sarong, Lontara manuscripts, and the mosque.
On the map
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Lontara Mandar: the old Mandar script
Mandar people call their old writing lontara, after the lontar palm whose dried leaves were written on before paper, and it is the same script the Bugis and Makassarese use. 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 ᨆ is ma and ᨆᨊ spells mana. Mandar scribes used it for royal chronicles, genealogies, law and Islamic texts, and copies of these manuscripts are still kept by families and in archives in West Sulawesi.
Unicode encodes Lontara once in the Buginese block. Mandar-focused teaching sources document both a 19-letter set and an expanded 23-letter set; this Unicode list shows the 23-letter version in 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, a nasal fused with a stop, was shaped around Buginese sounds; ᨕ carries a vowel at the start of a word and ᨖ represents the /h/ sound in Mandar Lontara.
Vowel signs and what Lontara leaves out
Mandar Lontara teaching materials use four signs to change inherent a to i, u, e, or o: ᨀᨗ ki with the sign above, ᨀᨘ ku below, ᨀᨙ ke in front, and ᨀᨚ ko after. In Unicode you always type the consonant first and then the sign, even for e, which the font then draws on the left.
Lontara has no way to write a consonant without a vowel. A final glottal stop or ng, a doubled consonant and an n or m before another consonant all go unwritten, so the name Mandar itself comes out as ᨆᨉ, ma-da, and the reader supplies the rest from knowing the language. Lontara texts can use spaces between larger units; the pallawa ᨞ separates rhythmic groups and ᨟ marks the end of a section. Adapted European punctuation marks are also attested.
Mandar in Latin letters: q, the apostrophe and double letters
Almost all Mandar written today, from text messages and song lyrics to street signs, 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. Mandar needs no accented letters, so an ordinary keyboard is enough.
Many Mandar syllables end in a glottal stop, the catch in English 'uh-oh'. The standard Mandar spelling marks it with q, as in sandeq (the Mandar outrigger sailboat), lipaq saqbe (the silk sarong) and pattuqduq (dancer). Apostrophe spellings also occur, as in Sayyang Pattu'du and Lipa' Sa'be. Doubled consonants are written double, as in Sayyang, and they matter, because in Lontara they disappear.
How to type Mandar Lontara and the glottal stop
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, Lontara keyboard apps 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 ᨆ for ᨆ.
For the glottal stop in Latin letters, q and the straight apostrophe ' are on every keyboard. The curly apostrophe ’ is Alt0146 on Windows and OptionShift] on a Mac, and phones offer it when you hold down the ' key. Prices are written in Indonesian rupiah (Rp 25.000), which has no Unicode symbol of its own.
Where the Mandar language is spoken
Mandar is the language of the Mandar people of West Sulawesi (Sulawesi Barat) in Indonesia , along the coast of Polewali Mandar, Majene and Mamuju. CLDR estimates about 260,000 speakers; other counts are higher, and Mandar fishermen and traders have also settled in other coastal parts of the archipelago. Nearly every speaker also uses Indonesian, and everyday writing mixes the two.
Mandar belongs to the South Sulawesi languages, alongside Buginese, Makasar and the Toraja languages, and shares Lontara with Buginese and Makassarese. See the Buginese collection for the same script as Bugis write it, and the Indonesian collection and the Indonesia page for the letters, flag and emoji of the country as a whole.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyMandar Alphabet & Lontara Mandar combos
9Worth knowing
- Lontara cannot write a consonant on its own, so the language's own name, Mandar, is spelled ᨆᨉ, the same letters as any word read ma-da.
- The sandeq, the Mandar outrigger sailboat, is often called the fastest traditional sailing boat in the Austronesian world, and Mandar sailors race it in the Sandeq Race, held almost every year since the mid-1990s.
- In Sayyang Pattu'du, children who have finished reading the Qur'an ride through their village on horses trained to step and dance to the drums.
- The q in sandeq is not pronounced like an English q: it is the glottal stop, the catch in 'uh-oh'.
Questions people ask
7What is the Mandar script called?
Lontara, or aksara lontara Mandar. It is shared by Mandar, Bugis and Makassarese. Unicode encodes a 23-letter set, and Mandar teaching sources also document a 19-letter set; both use the four vowel signs i, u, e and o. Today Mandar is mostly written in the Latin alphabet.
How many letters are in aksara lontara Mandar?
Unicode's shared Lontara block encodes 23 letters, but Mandar teaching sources also document a 19-letter set with four vowel signs (i, u, e, o). The expanded set adds four prenasalized letters: ngka, mpa, nra, and nca.
Is Lontara Mandar different from Lontara Bugis?
The letters are the same and Unicode encodes them once, in the Buginese block. What differs is the language written with them, so spellings follow Mandar words and sounds.
Why do Mandar words end in q?
The standard Mandar spelling uses q for the glottal stop, as in sandeq and lipaq saqbe.
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 Lontara 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.
Where is the Mandar language spoken?
In West Sulawesi, Indonesia, mainly in Polewali Mandar, Majene and Mamuju. CLDR estimates about 260,000 speakers, nearly all of whom also speak Indonesian.
