Tae' Alphabet & Letters

Tae', also called bahasa Luwu, is written in Latin script, using Indonesian spellings for its shared vowels and consonants. A 2021 Luwu writing guide proposes the vowels a, e, i, o, u and consonant spellings b, c, d, g, j, k, l, m, n, ng, ny, p, r, s, t, w, plus ’ for the glottal stop; it uses no accented letters.

As in Indonesian, some single sounds are written with two letters: ng is the sound at the end of English 'sing', and it does not begin a word; ny is the sound in Spanish 'año'; c is the ch of 'church' and j the j of 'jam'. Doubled consonants are written double, because the length of a consonant can change a word.

Why Tae' is spelled with an apostrophe

Like its neighbours Sa'dan Toraja, Buginese and Makassarese, Tae' has a glottal stop, the catch in the throat between the two halves of English 'uh-oh', and many words end in it. Indonesian spelling has no letter for that sound, so Tae' writers mark it with an apostrophe after the vowel: the name of the language itself is Tae', said with a sharp stop at the end. Leave the apostrophe off and you write a different word, or one a reader has to guess.

The name Tae' was suggested from the negative word used throughout the Luwu area; the same negative term is also used in Sa'dan Toraja. Either the straight apostrophe ' or the curly ’ is used; word processors and phones often turn one into the other, and both are read the same. Some Sulawesi writers use q for the glottal stop instead, as Mandar spelling often does, but the apostrophe is the usual form in Tae'.

How to type Tae' letters on Windows, Mac and phone

All Tae' letters are on a standard keyboard, and the straight apostrophe ' is the key next to Enter on most layouts. For the curly apostrophe ’, press Alt+0146 on the Windows number pad, or Option+Shift+] on a Mac; on Android and iPhone keyboards, hold down the ' key to choose it. In HTML the curly form is ’.

If you search, file or tag something online, it helps to write the name both ways, Tae' and Tae, since many search boxes and web addresses drop the apostrophe. Prices are written in Indonesian rupiah as Rp followed by the amount (Rp 20.000), with a dot for thousands; the rupiah has no Unicode symbol of its own.

Where bahasa Tae' Luwu is spoken

Tae' is the language of Tana Luwu, the old Luwu country at the head of the Gulf of Bone in South Sulawesi, Indonesia 🇮🇩: the city of Palopo, the regencies of Luwu, North Luwu (Luwu Utara, whose capital is Masamba) and East Luwu, plus the Rongkong highlands. CLDR estimates about 310,000 speakers. Indonesian is widely used alongside it, and Buginese and other languages are spoken in parts of the area, so everyday talk and messages often mix languages.

Luwu is remembered as one of the oldest kingdoms of South Sulawesi, and the I La Galigo epic, written in Buginese, places its heroes there. Tae' itself belongs to the South Sulawesi branch of the Austronesian family and is a close relative of Sa'dan Toraja and Mamasa; more distant cousins are Buginese, Makassarese and Mandar, each of which has its own collection here, as do Indonesian and Indonesia.